#not to mention different susceptibility to freckling

[hale-of-stiles-heart]

mock the meat it feeds on

For the prompt: could you do geraskier "Don't you trust me?" / "You're not the one I don't trust..." with jaskier being jealous over/worried about triss? (in the books+games she does some manipulative stuff to be with geralt.)

I’ve only ever seen the show so I wasn’t too sure about the shady stuff regarding Triss and couldn’t find a simple explanation of it when I tried to look it up so I kinda took a different route because I really like show Triss so hopefully you still like it! Also on ao3!

And I’m gonna tag @roughentumble again!

In all the years that Jaskier has known Geralt, since that very first day in Posada, he's never known him to tolerate cities well, let alone actually enjoy them, which is why his sudden affinity for Novigrad is so vexing. Well, that and the reason for his newfound affinity.

Her name is Triss Merigold. She's a sorceress, of course, because Geralt apparently has a type and much to Jaskier's disappointment it's decidedly not talkative bards, and Jaskier trusts her about as much as he trusts a rabid dog.

The first time Jaskier meets her, he and Geralt are in Novigrad to replenish Geralt's dwindling supply of herbs and elixirs after a string of back-to-back contracts along the northern Redanian coast. They're searching for an apothecary, Geralt in the same foul mood he always slips into when they're forced into larger cities for whatever reason, his enhanced senses easily overwhelmed by all the sights and sounds and smells of the city, making him incredibly susceptible to sensory overload and the consequent migraines that followed.

Jaskier's done his best over the years to accommodate for Geralt's sensitivity, content with either avoiding large cities altogether when traveling with Geralt or taking it upon himself to venture into busy marketplaces or meet with aldermen while Geralt waited on the outskirts of the city. But buying food or delivering severed monster heads to aldermen was a far cry from collecting the necessary ingredients Geralt needed.

Geralt himself was a walking encyclopedia of flowers and herbs needed for his potions, but Jaskier only possessed a rudimentary understanding of them, garnered from explanations Geralt had supplied when Jaskier had sufficiently wheedled him enough for a herbology lesson. Making the potions used by witchers was a precise science; one wrong ingredient or combination of such could result in a potion meant to staunch bleeding instead thinning the blood and preventing clotting or an elixir meant to heal instead being little more than poison.

And Jaskier would rather Geralt not die because he confused puffball and sewant mushrooms.

With no other option and Geralt's supplies running dangerously low, too low for him to risk even thinking about taking another contract, Geralt's reluctantly accompanied Jaskier into Novigrad.

They initially avoid the main marketplace in favor of backstreets and narrow alleyways in search of a more niche apothecary, hedge witches or homeopaths selling their wares out of their small homes. But after finding three small-scale herbalists' inventory severely lacking, they're forced to head to Hierarch Square in the heart of the city where the crowds are busiest.

They're scanning the overwhelmingly busy Square with its many shops and storefronts and throngs of swarming shoppers for a larger apothecary when they stumble onto Triss.

She's standing outside of a three-story house right on the Square, dressed in resplendent orange robes the color of fresh tiger lilies and, unsurprisingly, marigolds. The color, and the bright midmorning sunshine, brings out the bronze and auburn notes in her thick brown hair and highlights the brilliant sage green of her eyes, even at a distance.

She's watering a row of plants in a red brick planter that Jaskier immediately recognizes as healing herbs, yarrow and nettle and chamomile, milk thistle and Echinacea. Affixed just above the door to the home she's standing in front of is a large sign advertising her expertise as a sorceress, specifically one specializing in healing magic.

Jaskier's torn quite evenly between relief at finding someone who should have all the herbs Geralt requires and immediate distrust. Neither of them have very good track records in regards to sorceresses. They tend to want nothing more than to bed Geralt and get him wrapped around their little finger and tend to despise Jaskier solely for the fact that he exists.

If Jaskier didn't know better he'd say they were jealous, his friendship with Geralt always outliving the witcher's whirlwind affairs with his sorceresses. But Jaskier does know better and it wouldn't do to believe such a foolish notion, to think that Geralt truly wanted him more than he did any of his past lovers.

Now, Jaskier bites the inside of his cheek, weighing their options, or rather the lack thereof, when he notices Geralt noticing the sorceress, his eyes lighting up with recognition. Without any further warning, he strides through the crowd of busy shoppers with Roach in tow to greet the sorceress with one of his rare half-smiles.

She returns Geralt's smile with a radiant one of her own and him into a quick hug, leaning up to peck him on the cheek. Jaskier can only watch dumbly, feeling like a knife has just been plunged into his heart, reopening old wounds along the way.

After a moment, Jaskier hurries after Geralt, weaving in between people who don't seem to acknowledge his existence, stomping on his toes and elbowing him in the ribs as he rushes over to Geralt. Triss greets Jaskier with a wide smile, more polite than he expects her to be as she introduces herself when Geralt fails to bother with proper introductions, leaning in to give Jaskier a hug of his own.

Brushing a few of her curls behind her ear, she invites them in for tea and quite generously offers to help replenish their supplies as much as she possibly can. They sit in her drawing room that's fragrant with sage and neroli, full of dried herbs and various crystals displayed on a shelf above the large fireplace, sipping the orange blossom tea she pours them in delicate porcelain teacups while she and Geralt catch up.

Jaskier listens attentively as Triss explains how they'd first met in Temeria, about the striga and the witcher who fell victim to it before Geralt had arrived, about King Foltest's scandalous affair with his sister, about how she had soon after left Temeria in favor of setting up shop in Novigrad. She's much friendlier than Jaskier is used to sorceresses being, smiling warmly as they talk and laughing when Jaskier jokes about Geralt being much more tight-lipped when Jaskier had asked him for the story about the striga.

After they've finished chatting, Geralt lists off the various herbs and other ingredients they're in search of at Triss' request. With a radiant smile directed at Geralt, Triss rises from her seat and starts bustling around the room, gathering herbs and flowers and small glass jars to store them in, leaving Jaskier and Geralt to finish their tea.

She's across the room with her back to them, standing at a work table scattered with potted herbs, meticulously gathering leaves and petals, when Geralt suddenly stands and crosses the room to stand beside her, leaving Jaskier alone at the table with Triss' cat, a giant fluffy orange beast of a feline with a smushed face that bats at his hand whenever he tries to pet it. Jaskier watches with a sinking feeling in his stomach as Geralt leans in close to Triss to say something to her that has her blushing and giggling as she turns to playfully swat at Geralt's arm, their faces intimately close.

Jaskier forces himself to look away as they continue talking softly amongst themselves, his honeyed tea suddenly bitter on his tongue. The knife in his chest twists.

Triss sends them on their way an hour or so later after providing them with everything they need, declining any sort of payment when Geralt reaches for his coin purse. With a gentle hand on Geralt's shoulder, orange painted nails a sharp contrast to the black of his armor, inviting them to visit her again the next time they're in Novigrad. Jaskier selfishly hopes they need never again enter the city.

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Quite predictably, Jaskier’s hopes are cruelly dashed and not two months later they're returning to Novigrad to collect a bounty for a fleder that had been terrorizing an old cemetery not far from the city proper. As they approach the city gates, Jaskier offers to take the proof to the local alderman, hoping to spare Geralt the inevitable migraine, but Geralt just grunts something about having another errand to run.

They head to Hierarch Square immediately after seeing the alderman, Geralt's pockets heavy with coin as he leads them directly to Triss' home. It really is a lovely him, a pale cream color with dark wood timbering and a steeply pitched brown clay roof. It's a shame Jaskier despises the mere sight of it.

Triss greets them at the front door with a smile, the warm afternoon sunshine on her face highlighting the scattering of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. She's enchanting in a sage green dress that matches the shade of her eyes, yellow and orange marigolds embroidered along the hem and modest neckline.

She invites them in much to Geralt's visible pleasure but Jaskier politely begs off, lying about needing to pop into Books and Scrolls across the way for a few things and ignoring the look Geralt gives him at the obvious lie. If he truly did need anything from the bookshop, he would have mentioned it to Geralt, something he and Geralt both know but it's the first excuse that springs to mind aside from being brutally honest and explaining that he has no interest in watching them flirt again.

He does actually head across the Square to wander aimlessly through Books and Scrolls in hopes of distracting himself from thoughts of what Geralt and Triss could be currently doing now that they had no audience. He chats with the proprietor for a bit, then indulges himself and purchases a few inexpensive chapbooks of poetry and a new leather-bound songbook, the pages gilded and the top right corner of every page stamped with the image of a charming little nightingale, a familiar symbol to a poet like himself. By the time he returns to where Roach is waiting outside of Triss', Geralt and Triss are still inside.

He scratches Roach behind the ear the way she likes and feeds her a carrot he's been saving in one of his bags for her, sits on the edge of one of Triss' planters and halfheartedly strums his lute, figures he might as well try to make some coin while Geralt's...preoccupied.

He's made enough coin to afford a nice room at the Kingfisher by the time Geralt emerges from Triss' home, a small self-satisfied grin on his face. It's a shame, really. Typically Jaskier would be basking in the rare sight of Geralt smiling but at this moment it just sets his heart plummeting.

Jaskier would like nothing more than to leave Novigrad as soon as possible but it's growing dark and he'd like to indulge in some creature comforts only an inn of fine repute in a large city can offer, rich wine and a large tub and feather mattresses. Geralt doesn't argue, either in too good of a mood from his dalliance or simply because he enjoys said comforts just as much as Jaskier does, leading the way to the nearby inn while Jaskier forces enough enthusiasm to prattle on about how it was one of his own ballads that led to the particular naming of the Kingfisher.

He performs the very song that evening at Olivier, the innkeeper's, request, stealing surreptitious glances at Geralt in the dark corner he's claimed as his own for the evening as he sings of an unrequited love so painful and all-consuming that when the young maiden learned that the knight she so adored had eloped with a gorgeous princess, she threw herself into the sea. It was only the compassion of a sympathetic goddess that saved her from her fate, turning her into a kingfisher so she could sing of her lost love forevermore.

Jaskier thinks of the nearby harbor, with its fishing ships and sailors, and wonders what kind of bird he'd become if he threw himself to the mercy of the sea.

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To Jaskier's disdain, the pattern continues for the next several months.

Any time that they're even remotely close to Novigrad, they make a detour to the city, booking a discounted room at the Kingfisher (the rate generously halved by Olivier who gives Jaskier his drinks for free and always insists he grace them with a performance or two of his ballad about the kingfisher) that Geralt scarcely uses, constantly at Triss' home.

Jaskier splits his time at the Kingfisher, catching up with Olivier or performing with Priscilla, or the Passiflora, baring his heart and soul to the Marquise Serenity's sympathetic working girls who always coo over him and let him wax poetic about the brave, stoic, unfairly handsome witcher who will never return his affection. In the evenings, when Geralt deigns to return to the inn, always smiling the smile of a well-fucked man, Jaskier forces conversation while Geralt plays Gwent with Olivier or other patrons of the inn.

But most of all, he aches.

It's harder, somehow, with Triss. With Yennefer, while just as powerful and ever-present, the jealousy he felt was accompanied by the fact that he simply disliked Yennefer altogether, even before she and Geralt started their weird, complicated, fucked up relationship.

It wasn't difficult to dislike her when she had threatened him, held him at knifepoint, demanded he make a damn wish at the risk of losing his manhood if he refused. She would've easily killed him in her pursuit of the djinn and never lost a wink of sleep over it, disliked him just as much as he disliked her.

But Triss, Triss is sweet and kind, unassuming and about as intimidating as a kitten regardless of the powerful magic she wields. She smiles warmly whenever she sees Jaskier, greeting him with offers of tea and sweetcakes or questions about how he is rather than with snide comments about his age or appearance or his singing.

She's altogether lovely, nurturing and generous and absolutely gorgeous. Someone Geralt deserves. And Jaskier hates it. Hates her, as petty and vindictive as it may be. Hates her kindness and her gentleness and her warm melodic laughter. Hates that the man he loves seems to love her.

He hates her. But not nearly as much as he hates himself.

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Not a full month has passed since the last time they've graced the streets of Novigrad and here they are once again back in the city after hearing word of a siren that's wandered into the busy harbor to prey on merchants from Skellige and local fishermen alike.

Accustomed to sirens hunting in packs, the way fish swim in schools and seabirds scavenge in flocks, Geralt had finished the contract in record time, lugging the siren's head and tail from the harbor to the alderman's home to collect his payment. By now Jaskier knows that it's useless to waste time hoping that they can simply leave Novigrad now that's Geralt job is done.

So when Geralt abruptly announces he has business elsewhere in the city, Jaskier just sighs and informs him that he'll be at the Passiflora in the event that Geralt needs to find him. Rather unlikely given that Geralt will be occupied with Triss for the next few hours. Fucking witcher stamina.

He ignores the odd, irritated look Geralt gives him as they part ways. Like Geralt has any right to be bothered by him seeking out his own pleasure with the ladies at the Passiflora when he's off getting tangled up in expensive sheets with a bloody sorceress.

It's not as if Jaskier's actually going to the Passiflora to indulge in the services offered there. Geralt knows that he loathes the concept of having to pay for a fuck, not when he can seduce nearly anyone he chooses with his charm and wit alone, as evidenced by the scores of married men and women whose beds he's graced.

No, Jaskier's heading to the famed brothel for much more selfish reasons than wetting his wick. To strum melancholy chords on his lute and cry and complain about his one-sided love.

Which is exactly what he does. This early in the day the Passiflora isn't very busy, the ladies milling around the extravagant front parlor with its thick red brocade curtains and exposed wood beams, relaxing on red velvet chaise lounges and large tufted couches big enough to host an orgy on.

They greet him with kind smiles and calls of his name, like they're welcoming an old friend, and he manages a smile that isn't entirely forced. He sits on one of the chaise lounges and begins playing, another melancholy ballad about lost love and heartbreak, the ladies gathering round to listen to him sing, charitably ignoring the way his voice shakes.

He leaves the Passiflora a few hours later feeling a bit lighter for having aired his grievances to his enraptured audience, heading straight to Triss' house to collect his witcher for supper. Roach isn't waiting outside like she typically is but Jaskier just assumes Geralt left her in the warmth and comfort of the Kingfisher's meticulously maintained stables under the care of Olivier's best stablehand.

Jaskier isn't sure what exactly possesses him to actually head inside to collect Geralt, should know from experience to be wary about poking his head in on Geralt and his sorceresses. And yet he strolls right into Triss' home like a lamb to the slaughter.

The drawing room, filled with multiple bouquets of marigolds and orange dahlias, is empty aside from Triss' cat. The great orange beast is sprawled out on its side on the green velvet sofa, watching Jaskier with its pale yellow eyes rather judgmentally. Quite childishly, Jaskier sticks his tongue out at it.

He continues through the house to the kitchen, Geralt's name on his lips, and immediately regrets it.

Triss is leaning against the edge of her wooden kitchen table, nearly sitting on it to accommodate the large witcher standing between her parted legs, knees bracketing his hips. The dual swords, silver for monsters steel for humans, strapped to Geralt's back are all that he can see of him. That and one of his big callused hand as they slip under the rucked up hem of Triss' deep green robes to gently clutch at her bared thigh.

It's like Rinde all over again, helplessly watching Geralt in another's embrace as his heart shatters in his chest with enough force it could shake the earth itself. His entire chest aching like he's just been sucker punched, Jaskier averts his eyes and starts spouting half-formed apologies, stepping backward and accidentally knocking a mortar and pestle off a nearby counter with a loud clatter in his haste to retreat.

It's as he's still profusely apologizing that he belatedly realizes that Geralt doesn't have any scars on his left wrist. Unlike the wrist connected to the hand on Triss' exposed thigh. And that while he saw the broad shoulders and dual swords of a witcher, he didn't spot a single white hair, instead what appeared to be a thatch of dark hair.

He looks up sharply, trailing off, to see Triss hastily pulling down her skirts, cheeks darkened with a blush. And standing beside her is...

"Eskel?!" Jaskier gasps, looking the witcher up and down in shock. He's unmistakable with his dark wispy hair and spiked jacket and handsome smile, not to mention the rather distinctive scars running down the right side of his face.

They've only met on a few occasions, on contracts serious enough to attract more than one witcher. Such an occurrence would typically lead to the witchers trying to beat each other to finish the contract in order to claim the reward for themselves but in the case of two Wolf School witchers such as Geralt and Eskel, it simply led to the contracts being finished quicker than expected, the reward evenly split, and Eskel regaling Jaskier with embarrassing childhood stories about Geralt.

Now, Eskel greets him with a crooked smile, rubbing the back of his neck as though embarrassed about being caught. "Jaskier! You manage to drag Geralt to Novigrad?"

The mere mention of Geralt's name sets Jaskier alight, in an instant absolutely fuming as he cries, "What in the hell is going on here?! I would expect this from the likes of you — he points an accusatory finger at Triss, then turns to Eskel — "but you?! My gods, what's Geralt going to think?! His own brother...! Melitele's tits, how in the bloody hell is going to handle this-this despicable behavior?! You should be ashamed of yourselves!"

To his chagrin, Eskel merely laughs, turning to Triss who sends him a confused look. She turns back to Jaskier, still smoothing out her skirts, and opens her mouth, undoubtedly in an attempt to defend her cruel deception.

"I don't want to hear it!" Jaskier snaps, incensed. He throws up his hands in frustration and turns on his heel to stomp back out of the kitchen, through the drawing room, and out of Triss' home, slamming the door behind him, fully prepared to storm across the Square and retreat to his and Geralt's room at the Kingfisher.

He has no plan, no inkling of what exactly his next step is beside waiting for Geralt to return to their room and somehow explaining that once again his sorceress lover has hurt him with her selfishness. The thought of breaking such dreadful news to Geralt is daunting; Jaskier doesn't ever want to be the cause of such pain for his friend.

He may act the careless rakehell when it suits him, ricocheting from one whirlwind affair to another, but even he isn't immune to the sting that comes with being left for another. He's grown attached to lovers time and time again only to be cast aside in favor of someone else, someone younger, prettier, less annoying, the pain always just as sharp as the very first time.

He thinks of the careless way the Countess de Stael had abandoned him for her new lover, of how she had callously ousted him from her home and her life, of how he'd drowned his sorrow in women and wine and a wasted wish on a djinn that wasn't even under his command. Of the horrible pain he feels every time Geralt goes chasing after Yennefer, leaving him behind with his bruised and battered heart still on his sleeve.

He only gets a quarter of the way across the Square, still trying to sort out how exactly he's going to explain the horrid situation, before he quite literally bumps into Geralt, having paid no mind to the bustling crowd around him in his anger.

Geralt's clearly on his way to Triss' home; it's the only reason he ever steps foot in the busy Square, otherwise avoiding it like a plague even he wouldn't be immune to. Jaskier plants one hand on Geralt's chest and points back at Triss' house with the other as he resolutely declares, "You do not want to go in there!"

"Jaskier," Geralt grunts, rolling his eyes and pressing forward, making Jaskier slide backward across the stone-paved street, propelled by the unstoppable force that is Geralt of Rivia. Roach offers no assistance. "I need to see Triss about getting more wolfsbane, I'm out."

"Not right now, you don't!" Jaskier insists, holding up a finger in Geralt's face. Geralt ignores him, continuing to walk forward as Jaskier's boots make a horrendous sound as the soles scrape over the cobblestone. Jaskier lets out an affronted squeak. "Geralt! For once in your miserable life will you listen to me, you stubborn oaf! Especially when I'm trying to protect you!"

"Protect me?" Geralt echoes, abruptly freezing in his tracks. His hand immediately goes for his swords. "What's in there?"

"Oh, put your swords away, it's not a monster," Jaskier says, though he certainly considers anyone who would hurt Geralt in such a way to be quite monstrous indeed. Regardless, the swords aren't entirely necessary. Jaskier sighs. "I just... I don't want you going in there, alright?"

Geralt narrows his eyes almost imperceptibly, little more than a slight squint as he looks at Jaskier, dropping his hand back to his side. "Don't you trust me?"

"Oh please, Geralt," Jaskier scoffs, rolling his eyes. "It's not you I don't trust..."

"Jaskier," Geralt says again, patience wearing thin.

Jaskier sighs again, feeling absolutely awful about having to relay the terrible truth to Geralt. At the very least, he can spare Geralt the pain of witnessing it himself, from having the sight of his lover and his brother tangled together in an intimate embrace ingrained in his mind's eye forevermore.

"Geralt, I'm so sorry," Jaskier begins, unable to stop the nervous fidgeting of his fingers, alternating between wringing his hands together and picking at his cuticles. "I... I was looking for you at Triss' and I found her. With Eskel."

He hopes it's self-explanatory enough to be a sufficient explanation, that he won't have to delve into the lurid details, but Geralt simply stares at him expectantly. "And-And, oh Geralt, I'm so sorry. They were in a rather...compromising position."

"And?" Geralt demands when it becomes apparent Jaskier has nothing else to say, cocking a brow. He seems entirely unfazed by what Jaskier's just revealed to him, as though he had simply reported the weather and not an instance of infidelity.

"And? And?!" Jaskier repeats, aghast. "And, I'm sorry that your lover has been unfaithful! With one your own brothers of all people!"

His voice raises without his volition, the slightest edge of hysteria sharpening it. Fortunately, the dull roar of the marketplace around them drowns it out a bit and keeps him from making a spectacle of himself.

Still, Geralt does not react beyond the confused look plastered on his face. Jaskier doesn't exactly expect a jealous outburst or for Geralt to break down in tears but he does expect a reaction of some sort! Anger or resignation or upset. Anything! Something! Not confusion, not this otherwise blank expression.

Jaskier's about to ask if Geralt heard him when the other man finally speaks.

"Jaskier," he begins almost cautiously, like he has something of grave importance to inform Jaskier of and fears he might startle the bard. "Triss is not my lover."

Ooh, lovely, now Geralt's lying to him. It reignites Jaskier's anger with a vengeance.

"Oh, please, Geralt! Despite what you may think I am not an idiot! You hate cities, can barely tolerate them for more than a moment, and yet over the past year, you've made us stop in Novigrad whenever we're even remotely nearby! You spend hours with her doing Melitele knows what while I'm relegated to playing at the inn to earn coin for a room you scarcely even use!"

"You never gave the impression you wanted to sit with us," Geralt answers, as though that's what Jaskier is upset about, feeling unwelcome during their little trysts. "You seemed content keeping Roach company, but you were always welcome, Triss said so herself."

Jaskier lets out an outraged squawk, gesturing aimlessly in his frustration. "Welcome to what?! Watching the man I've been in love with for half my life and his new lover?! Well, no thank you! I may be a glutton for punishment but I am not a bloody masochist and I have no interest whatsoever in subjecting myself to such a thing!"

He barely has a moment to register what he's just said, what precious secret he's just so carelessly divulged, because as soon as the words are out of his mouth the bell tower across the Square erupts into sound, filling the afternoon with the clamor of bells. It's too much for Geralt, much too loud much too fast, the sound most assuredly deafening with his heightened sense of hearing. He immediately winces, squeezing his eyes shut and raising a hand to his temple.

"Oh, Geralt," Jaskier says, tone softening as he steps closer to Geralt to lay a hand on his shoulder. Geralt just hums, sounding pained. It immediately spurs Jaskier into action.

Keeping his hand on Geralt's shoulder, Jaskier sets his other hand around Geralt's right wrist, guiding him across the Square and letting him lean some of his rather considerable weight on him. Geralt maintains his light grip on Roach's reins like an anchor, earning a soft, soothing nicker from the mare as she gently bumps her snout against the side of his arm.

"Come now, we'll get you to the inn and get you some peace and quiet away from all this hubbub," Jaskier needlessly explains as he ushers Geralt down a less busy side street towards the Kingfisher. He bites his lip to keep from rambling the way he tends to when he's anxious or nervous, not wanting to exacerbate Geralt's migraine.

Fortunately, Geralt allows himself to be led to the Kingfisher and up the two flights of stairs to their room that's significantly quieter than the busy streets outside without any complaints, only speaking up to insist Jaskier make sure Roach is properly stabled. Jaskier leaves Geralt's side just long enough to ensure that Roach is content in her cozy stable with fresh hay and a few apples the size of his fist.

Returning to Geralt's side, Jaskier sits him down on the edge of the bed, helping him strip out of the heaviest pieces of his armor until Geralt waves him off to finish removing it himself, kicking off his boots in the meantime. As Geralt finishes removing his armor until he's in just his dark shirt and leathers, Jaskier bustles around the room making him some tea.

He boils the water over the fireplace, briefly lamenting the fact that he can't instantaneously boil it with a quick Igni, and prepares the dried chamomile flowers he keeps for just such an occasion. He digs a chunk of ginger root out of the bottom of his bag, grating a bit of it into the dried chamomile; just a touch so as not to overwhelm Geralt's sensitive palate.

He wraps the chamomile and hint of ginger in some cheesecloth as a makeshift teabag, setting it in a teacup Olivier has brought up at his request. The teacup is hand-painted, the delicate ivory-colored porcelain adorned with a ring of forget-me-nots and kingfishers in mid-flight. The irony of both symbols makes Jaskier's chest ache and a hollow laugh slip past his lips.

Once the water's done boiling, Jaskier pours some into the teacup, letting the tea steep for a few minutes before bringing it to Geralt who's still rubbing at his forehead. He instructs Geralt to drink it all then steps out to fetch a fresh pot of water from the kitchens, ferrying it back up to their room as quickly as he can. He dips an old rag, also taken from the kitchens, into the pot of cold water, wringing it out until it's damp rather than sopping wet before folding it and gently draping it across Geralt's forehead, setting his empty teacup aside.

He's holding the rag against Geralt's forehead, hoping it'll help alleviate his migraine to some degree, when Geralt's fingers curl around his wrist. His other hand comes to rest on the small of Jaskier's back beneath the hem of his doublet, reeling him in closer until their chests are nearly molded together, his shins hitting the side of the low mattress and his free hand settling on Geralt's shoulder.

Geralt's expression is significantly less pinched than it was in the Square as he looks up at Jaskier, pinning him in place with his gaze alone.

"Jaskier..." he rumbles, voice like an incoming thunderstorm. "What you said earlier..."

Jaskier squeezes his eyes shut, the memory of what he'd said outside Triss' washing over him like the rainstorm accompanying Geralt's thunder. Once again his careless tongue has gotten him into trouble, only this time instead of enraging some twopenny duke or sweet maiden's father, he's potentially ruined the most important relationship in his life.

He's said too much, like he always does. Always blathering on like the lovesick fool he is, using all sorts of pretty words and melodies to hide the ugly things he feels, like his jealousy and distrust, his petty resentment towards those whose only sin was that they'd had Geralt in the way that he's always wanted but can never have.

And now it's going to cost him Geralt, the way he's always known it would eventually. A foregone conclusion he'd tried to delay for as long as possible.

Now that Geralt knows that Jaskier's in love with him, now that Jaskier's so carelessly confessed his most well-guarded secret, he's sure to leave Jaskier in the dust the way he's always threatened. And Jaskier will be without the man he's devoted so much of his life to, with only memories and unsung love songs to keep him warm at night.

He waits patiently for Geralt to continue, pressing his lips together as he tries valiantly to steel himself for the inevitable. But bracing oneself for heartbreak is like bracing for a hurricane; being prepared did not alleviate the devastation that was wrought, it only made it slightly more manageable.

"Triss and I aren't lovers," Geralt says instead, and Jaskier just barely refrains from laughing in his face. "We're friends, acquaintances, really. Nothing more."

There's something about the tone of Geralt's voice, some undercurrent of steel and soft thunder, that makes it impossible for Jaskier to doubt the veracity of his statement, not when for all of Geralt's tendency to deflect Jaskier's prying questions he rarely ever lies to him.

Jaskier opens his eyes, looking down at Geralt with a confused frown. "But—"

"Last winter Eskel told me he'd met her on a contract in Novigrad, that they're...involved," Geralt elaborates. A small smile curls the corner of his lips up, it's the same small smile he wears when he teases Lambert or decides to make a joke at Jaskier's expense. "I've been visiting her to tell her about him. Old stories of dumb shit he's done, mischief he caused that led to a hiding."

Jaskier gapes at him, trying to wrap his mind around what Geralt's just told him. Once he does, he can't contain his incredulity. "You mean to tell me that for the past year you've been venturing into a city you despise solely to tell your brother's lover funny stories about him just to embarrass him?! Oh, gods, what am I even saying? That's exactly something you'd do you-you... You bloody muttonhead!"

Geralt's smile persists. "Muttonhead? You're the one who thought I was fucking Triss."

"Of course, I did!" Because you were always off slipping away to go see her at all hours, always whispering and cooing like a pair of lovesick mourning doves! What was I supposed to think? How was I to know you were just trying to embarrass your poor brother!" Jaskier defends, throwing up his free hand, indignation swelling within him before ebbing away to be replaced by a tide of embarrassment. He groans, hanging his head and closing his eyes. "I'm such an idiot, I cannot believe I've made such a fool of myself! Over a bloody misunderstanding of all things! Oh, sweet Melitele, I'm a fucking fool."

He draws in a sharp, ragged breath, raises his chin and tries to brace himself, staring over Geralt's shoulder. "And now... Now I'm sure you'll be taking your leave. Suppose Olivier will let me stay for a bit until I regain my bearings, as long as I perform my song about the kingfisher for him, he really does love that ballad."

"Jaskier," Geralt says, cutting off Jaskier's rambling before he can manage to embarrass himself any further. How very charitable of him. "Why would I leave?"

"Why would you...? Geralt! I just professed my love for you not half an hour's time ago! What else should I expect you to do? Pick me up in your arms and declare your endless devotion to me?!" Jaskier's impassioned diatribe trails off with a deep sigh. Still pressing the damp rag to Geralt's forehead, ever gentle to compensate for every hand that's touched him with nothing but cruelty, he breathes deeply and meets Geralt's eyes. "I told you, Geralt, I'm not a masochist. I would not torture myself with such grand delusions."

"I know well that you do not reciprocate my feelings. I understand, of course, and I've made my peace with it," Jaskier goes on, forcing himself to go on even when he feels his throat tighten. "I didn't intend on admitting it in such a way — in any way, really — and I apologize. I would be happy to continue traveling with you, truly nothing would make me happier, but I understand if you wish to part ways. I would never...hold it against you or any such thing, I swear."

"Did you mean it?" Geralt asks, catching Jaskier off guard. He's not sure what exactly Geralt's referring to.

He frowns at Geralt, sure his confusion is scrawled across his face. "Did I mean what?"

"What you said," Geralt says rather helpfully. Jaskier raises his brows expectantly. He's said a great deal this afternoon.

"When you said you love me," Geralt clarifies, meeting Jaskier's eyes with no trace of hesitation.

Jaskier manages another weak smile, swallowing around the lump in his throat. "Of course. With every breath in my body. Every line in every song."

"Jaskier..." Geralt breathes, sounding wounded. His eyes slide shut and he tips his head to the side until his nose and cheek graze the heel of Jaskier's palm. He presses his lips to the spot where Jaskier's wrist and hand, softly kissing it.

Jaskier's breath catches in his throat at the fleeting touch of Geralt's lips, his stubble rasping against the smooth skin of his inner wrist. Hearing the hitch in Jaskier's breath, Geralt opens his eyes, gazing up at Jaskier with those buttercup gold eyes of his that always make Jaskier melt, knees weak from naught but a look.

With the hand he has on the small of Jaskier's back, warm through the fabric of his chemise, Geralt pulls him even closer. So close that Jaskier has to straddle Geralt's knee to avoid falling on his ass.

The movement startles another gasp out of Jaskier. He drops the wet rag with a muted thump against the hardwood floor as Geralt places another barely-there kiss to his wrist, just shy of where his own fingers are still curled around Jaskier's forearm.

Geralt raises his head and Jaskier can't resist the urge to cup Geralt's cheek in his hand, only having to move it an inch or so to rest his palm against Geralt's jaw, his thumb automatically brushing over the sharp cut of his cheekbone. Geralt leans into the touch the same way that Roach leans into scratches behind her ear, full-bodied and surprisingly trusting.

Chests brushing and Jaskier's knees bracketing one of Geralt's, they're dangerously close together. He knows Geralt would never hurt him, knows he could likewise never be able to be truly afraid of him. But Jaskier's heart pounds against his ribcage like waves crashing against the rocky shore, the ebb and flow thundering in his ears like warning bells.

Geralt's face is close to his, only a few scant inches apart, a temptation like he's never known. Geralt's always been a temptation, a constant one dangled in front of Jaskier but just out of his reach, closer than a brother. But he's never been *this* close.

Jaskier's been good for the past twenty odd years. Has resisted all of his selfish urges and one-sided wanting. Hasn't let his hands linger longer than could be deemed friendly, hasn't succumbed to his ever-present desire to just throw caution and consequences to the wind and kiss Geralt with all the passion and longing he's managed to contain thus far.

He's been tortured with temptation over the years, nearly driven mad by it all. By the temptation of helping Geralt out of his armor and sullied clothes, face to face with miles of pale skin and mouthwatering muscle greater men than he would find hard to resist drooling over, ignoring his baser desires in order to help bathe him. By the temptation of waking in a shared bed with Geralt only an arm's length away, if even that far, his handsome features softened by sleep and the early morning sunshine bathing him in rays of pale gold.

But he could never make that leap of faith, could never close the distance between them even for the most chaste of kisses. He was too worried about losing what he already had and cherished so dearly in his pursuit of more, afraid he would lose his world while shooting for the moon.

He wasn't lying when he said he would be happy to continue traveling with Geralt, content to have Geralt in his life as a friend rather than the alternative of not having him in his life at all.

But Geralt's eyes flicker down to his lips for a long moment, a flash of brilliant gold promising treasure far beyond any precious metals or priceless gems and Jaskier can no longer resist the temptation, yielding to it instead.

He leans down toward Geralt at the same moment Geralt raises his head, pulled together like two magnets, binary stars drawn towards one another by mutual attraction. He's not sure who exactly kisses who first or if they simply crash together at precisely the same time, Jaskier's hand slipping into Geralt's hair when Geralt releases his wrist in favor of cupping the side of Jaskier's face in his big hand.

Kissing Geralt is like feeling the first rays of morning sunshine wash over him, like walking in the first rainfall after a long drought. It's like the rush of performing for a large audience at a prestigious event and like the intimate camaraderie formed when performing for just a small tavern full of attentive listeners.

It's honey and salted sea air, steel and silver and snow, blood and ambrosia. Like coming home and embarking on a new adventure all at once.

Jaskier never wants to stop. Knows he could easily get addicted to it if Geralt let him, could grow drunk off the bouquet of his lips like the finest wine. And, wonder of wonders, it seems as though Geralt just might.

Because Geralt's kissing him with the same remarkably focused, single-minded intensity he uses when completing an especially difficult contract, when he's sharpening his swords by the firelight, when he's taking care of Roach. Being the object of such intensity is heady, rather flattering.

Geralt's right hand is warm on Jaskier's back, his little finger dipping under the hem of his chemise, using the hand cupping Jaskier's face to guide his head just the slightest bit to the side as he deepens the kiss. His lips are slightly chapped but addictive nonetheless as he curls his tongue against Jaskier's in a way that nearly makes him see stars. Jaskier's knees are perilously weak, knees gone to jelly like the strawberry preserves Geralt fancies so much at the first touch of his lips.

The position is a bit awkward. With how low the bed is, Jaskier's forced to crane his neck at an awkward angle, head tipped to the side to avoid simply mashing his face against Geralt's like a schoolboy having his first snog. He can feel a crick in his neck that's going to plague him for days if he doesn't move but the thought of tearing his lips away from Geralt's is downright torturous and he'd rather stand there forever in slight discomfort if it means he can continue to kiss his witcher for just a moment longer.

But Geralt, ever vigilant, seems to notice the uncomfortable way Jaskier's head is angled, moving farther back on the mattress and pulling Jaskier with him until the bard's crawling on his knees on the mattress, now straddling Geralt's thigh rather than his knee. They're of a height now, easing the way as Jaskier pours all of himself into the kiss with renewed passion.

But even with the lungs of a singer, Jaskier has to break the kiss to catch his breath, chest heaving as he presses his forehead against Geralt's. Geralt shifts his hand from Jaskier's face to his hip as he brushes the tip of his nose across Jaskier's cheek, practically nuzzling him, and mutters, "Never wanted her, Jaskier. Just you. Only you."

Jaskier can't help the groan that's wrenched out of him at the hushed confession, lowering his head for another deep kiss, fisting his left hand in the fabric of Geralt's shirt. His heart feels fit to burst at the confirmation that his feelings aren't one-sided, that his love for Geralt is reciprocated to some degree, enough for him to be straddling the man's lap and kissing the daylights out of him.

A few moments later, he again reluctantly drags his lips away from Geralt's for the sake of breathing, smiling when Geralt grunts almost petulantly as Jaskier pauses their kiss. Catching his breath, he runs his fingers through Geralt's hair, the glide of the silk-soft strands through his fingers both soothing and exhilarating.

Geralt ducks his head to bury his face in the side of Jaskier's neck, peppering kisses down the side of his neck from just below his ear to the collar of his doublet. Jaskier lets out a soft breath, hand tightening in Geralt's hair.

"I... I should apologize to Triss," Jaskier manages to say in spite of the cloud of lust filling his entire body, mind clearing for a moment even as Geralt very lightly grazes his teeth up the long line of his neck. "I said some rather awful things to her..."

"Hmm... Later..." Geralt rumbles against his throat, lips rasping over the sensitive skin and making Jaskier squirm atop him. Jaskier shudders as Geralt starts laying open-mouthed kisses on his throat, wants him to leave a mark, a bruise in the shape of his mouth as proof that this isn't just another midday fantasy or late-night dream, that it's real. He doubts Geralt would be adverse.

"E-Eskel, too," Jaskier says shakily, eyes fluttering shut as Geralt continues showering his neck with attention, his tongue occasionally darting out to taste his skin. He gasps out a sharp moan when Geralt nips at a rather sensitive spot just behind Jaskier's earlobe, apparently not a fan of Jaskier saying other people's names while wrapped in his arms. Jaskier can't exactly fault him for that, dipping his head to press his lips against Geralt's.

The hand on Jaskier's back slips more fully beneath the hem of his chemise, fingers fanned out across the small of his back, Geralt's other hand on his hip squeezing gently. Jaskier shivers again, Geralt's bare skin on his own sending a frisson of pleasure down his spine, heat pooling low in his gut.

He blindly feels for the front laces of Geralt's shirt, humming happily when he finds them. He abandons his grip on Geralt's hair to settle both hands on Geralt's broad chest, sturdy and warm beneath his palms, fingers toying with the laces.

He unlaces them as much as possible, revealing a wide swath of his chest, scattered with old scars and dusted with hair. Jaskier can't resist running his hands over the bared skin, tracing his fingers over familiar scars he knew the stories of by heart: claw marks from a griffin, an old stab wound from a lucky bandit, a slash from the tail spikes of a forktail, all of them part of the man he loves so much, features rather than flaws.

He wants to touch more of Geralt's chest, wants to strip him of his shirt and run his fingers over every scar he can find, press kisses to each one. But he also wants to bury his hands in Geralt's hair again, to brush his fingertips through the silky strands that smell faintly of jasmine bath oil. He wants to cup Geralt's face in his hands, brush kisses across his cheeks and forehead and eyelids and chin. He'd also very much like to get his hands on Geralt's ass.

Years of wanting have left him with so many desires to touch, all of them getting muddled in his head in his haste to accept whatever Geralt's willing to offer even if it's just a few more kisses. But his mind is still clear enough for something to occur to him.

"Oh!" He gasps, pulling back for a moment, panting a bit. He winces theatrically, genuinely contrite. "You may not ever be able to go to the Passiflora again. I may have told all the girls there that you're a heartless cad who's quite thoroughly shattered my heart with your gallivanting ways."

Geralt quirks a pale brow, clearly annoyed that Jaskier's once again put their kissing on hold in favor of prattling on. But there's a smirk slowly tugging at the corner of his lips as he looks up at Jaskier. "Is that what you were doing there?"

Jaskier nods a touch sheepishly, chewing his lip. He runs his thumb over Geralt's bottom lip and the cleft in his chin, feeling a bit foolish as he admits, "You know I don't like paying for sex. I needed a shoulder to cry on. The girls were always rather sympathetic."

"Hmm," Geralt replies, reaching up to card his fingers through Jaskier's hair, brushing his thumb over his cheek. His eyes flicker down to look at Jaskier's mouth, lips pink and kiss swollen. "Somehow, I think I'll manage without their services. Now shut up, Jaskier."

And Jaskier, well, he's more than happy to comply. For now. The sea won’t be claiming him tonight. He’s found his halcyon days.

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

I Need to Talk About “Problematic Faves” within TWDG [3/?]

Character design, being drawn towards characters we find visually attractive, and how big of a role in plays in our feelings towards them.

“He's a murderer but like.... a cute murderer, y’know?”

This goes hand in hand with the whole first impressions thing we’re talking about, but rather than talking about the character’s traits, dialogue, history, and overall character, we’re talking about physical appearance.

This is something I want to touch on even though I already know the answer to it. It’s just a food for thought sort of idea that I wanted to explore given how much we talk about our favorite characters appearances while discussing them with one another.

Let’s face it: We’re all a little shallow at some point in our lives.

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover” is bullshit. I pick up that book in the first place because it’s pretty and has sprayed edges. The only reason I put it back it is because I can’t find an actual summary of the book because publishers think we want to read a bunch of “Best book of da year!” by Who The Fuck Cares written all over the place rather than an actual summary...

....What was my point?

Oh, right, character design.

When we’re first introduced to a character, we immediately make a judgement of them based off their looks.That’s not to say that our opinions remain the same based on our first impressions after only looking at them, but it’s something we do initially. 

Game developers, artists, writers, and directors will usually strive to make their characters as visually appealing to us as possible because that’s what makes us go “ohhh they pretty *picks thing up.*” 

There are issues that develop from this, such as unrealistic expectations of what true beauty is and how it actually affects the audience. After taking in so much of this content, I started to wonder if it had any affect on why we have “Problematic Faves” and if there IS something linked within the way we view them as physically attractive. 

While I believe that appearance is an important factor in character development and is what draws us to them, it’s also a bit more complicated than that.

One of the many things I adore about the final season is it’s character design for all the students at Ericson. All of the Ericson kiddos have their own unique looks and manners of which they hold themselves.

Sure we’ve got Louis and Violet, who we all gush about all the time on how beautiful they are. How many times have we talked about Louis’ freckles or Violet’s eyes or just how gosh darn pretty we think they are while incorporating it into writing our fanfics or headcanons or creating out artworks of them?

But what’s great is that they aren’t all “conveniently attractive” or someone a shallow Hollywood director would look at one time and say “there’s our star!”

Willy is a fan favorite among many in our community. What I love about his design is his teeth. He’s a kid growing up in the apocalypse without proper dental care. His teeth are crooked, there are gaps between them, and he’s even missing some. If that same Hollywood director were to look at him, they’d either slap some extreme braces on him or cast him as a tree troll. 

But not everyone has those perfectly straight pearly whites. Some of us have crooked teeth, or we’ve had painful braces to try and straighten them, or we’ve lost or broken a tooth at some point. You know how refreshing it is to see a character as likable as Willy show up with that smile of his while still being considered a fan favorite? 

Speaking of refreshing, what about Ruby? Everyone loves Ruby. She’s not tall and thin, she’s short and thicker. 

I remember seeing nasty posts questioning why someone like Aasim would have any interest in her because of the way she’s built, and that that pisses me off. 

It’s so damn great to see someone like Ruby portrayed the way she is in this game. As someone who IS more on the shorter and heavier side, it’s hard to find a character like this who doesn’t suddenly become slim therefore “prettier” over the course of the story or who isn’t a terrible or whose weight and build is all their character is. The last movie I watched that featured a plus size main character was that god awful Sierra Burgess movie on Netflix and that character made me want to punch things. 

All I can say is thank god for Ruby.

Speaking of which, how about Omar? He’s short and stocky, too, but y’know what? We made this dude a GOD. What does that tell you?

These are examples using more minor characters that fall into that non-”Problematic Fave” tier, but what about our characters that do?

I used to have a strong theory that some characters got more love and attention JUST because they’re more attractive to the audience, even if their character is boring, holds little to no plot relevance, or is an “evil” being beyond forgiveness.  

It’s a theory that I believe still holds some truth, though I think that truth lies more with the younger fans, or those who aren’t quite as mature. 

As someone who has worked around elementary school children, as well as 13-14 year olds, I think I can safely make the assumption that they tend to take things at face value a good chunk of the time.

Pretty person = Good!

Not pretty person = Bad!

That sort of deal. 

So, the question I pose is:

Does a character’s level of attractiveness have an effect on our willingness to forgive some of their more problematic behaviors?

I’m sure most of you read that and said “Uh, is this a trick question? No?”

When you think about the kinds of stories that we’re always told about the beautiful princesses who are pure and good and the ugly stepmothers who are evil and bad, it’s not hard to see why the younger ones would see things as more black and white rather than a shade of gray. 

If the pretty princess poisons her “evil” stepmother during their morning tea, how easily do we forgive her just because we’re told that she’s a pure, pretty princess? We know poisoning someone is bad, but... if the stepmother was ugly and evil, then the princess must have had a reason for doing this, right? So... it’s okay... right?

Is the princess justified in her actions, even if the stepmother wasn’t doing anything more than drinking her morning tea?

I look at that and say, “No,” whereas a much younger person might say, “Yeah. The stepmother was evil.” 

Young children are fascinating to talk to, by the way. They’re sponges who absorb knowledge like you wouldn’t believe but somehow they still take everything at that face value and believe whatever the “good” person says in a story until you help them see the bigger picture. That’s why they tend to be more susceptible to falling for twists. 

But once you explain to them the more complicated elements of the princess and the stepmother, they’re intelligent enough to grasp that the princess is wrong. 

I believe once we grow older and open ourselves up to more complex stories full of gray characters, learning about them through experience, we start to see that beauty isn’t just in the eye in the beholder, but also that it doesn’t mean shit at the end of the day. 

You can have the most beautiful person in the world be your main character, but if that beautiful person drowns a bag full of kittens, suddenly they aren’t so attractive, now are they?

One of a kid’s favorite example of a good-looking antagonist is Hans from Frozen. 

While I think the whole “he was actually evil the whole time haha we fooled you” thing in that movie is garbage, I give it credit for being the first exposure of this concept to young kids, sending them down a path of looking at different characters they see in a new light. 

We like characters who are attractive because, well, they’re attractive. But we’re  also mature enough to know that their attractiveness isn’t solely based on their appearance. It’s merely the seed that only grows with development, personality, and an arc. It only makes up a small portion of why we like a character in the first place. We know that just because someone is good-looking, it doesn’t justify their actions. 

But for those who are still growing out of those black and while fairy tales and just starting to expand their views of different characters while learning that looks can be deceiving, are they more likely to forgive a character or not fully understand that they’re in the wrong just because they’re visually pleasing? 

Another example outside of TWDG that I can give you is Nathan Prescott from the game Life is Strange. I’ve mentioned this game several times before, and even wrote a whole segment on it in my Louis and Violet essay from a while back. 

When I was a young lass, I picked up this game and really liked it. I wasn’t as into it as I am TWDG, but I liked it enough to play every episode as it came out and then check the tag to see what everyone thought. 

While browsing this tag, I noticed that a lot of the fan base seemed young. Makes sense, it IS a game starring teens set in an academy setting and I was young, too. 

But with that, one thing that always bothered me was how a number of young people talked about Nathan. 

Nathan who, if you haven’t played the game, is one of the antagonists. They would gush about this kid, seeming to make up excuses for the appalling things he did and it felt very tied to his looks. 

I’m sorry to any Life is Strange fans who might’ve been one of these young fans... but that really is the impression I got at the time.

Maybe I just didn’t get the hype about this dude who drugged girls so he could pose and take pictures of them because of his weirdly under-explained relationship with the surprise villain of the story, but he doesn’t seem like the type of guy to get all “Poor, precious, beautiful baby boi didn’t deserve this !” about. 

Then again, if writing this has taught me anything, I might have missed something by not being involved with that fandom, but what I gathered was that he didn’t become the redeemable character they all thought he would be and they didn’t like that, so it becomes harder to try and justify the things he did because he didn’t end up being good in the end even though they all thought he would be. I guess. 

But, gathering that a lot of them were so young and going off the content I predominately saw... I don’t know. It didn’t ever feel right. I had suspicions that lead to this theory. That’s what I’m saying. 

This can apply to other fandoms, too, where a group of people will take a character/person they find attractive and gush about how pretty they are rather than anything else that makes them interesting. Not everyone, of course, but I get the feeling you all know what I mean and have come across something like it before. I’m just trying to explain it. 

Or maybe it is just me and you have no idea what I’m talking about. 

Either way. 

Returning back to our “Problematic Faves,” lets ask this question about them in particular. 

How much of David’s attractiveness plays into my love of him? 

I mean, he’s not a bad looking dude. In fact, I dare say that the Garcia brothers are both very attractive guys. I give ‘em both a 10/10. 

But does that actually aid in my actual feelings towards him at all? 

What about the others we’ve talked about so far?

I don’t see many people talking about how pretty they think Kenny is... though his mustache IS majestic and that’s something we all agree on.

And Lilly’s okay. I guess. 

Nate could be a good-looking dude if he’d just put his crazy eyes away.

I believe our best bet it in getting a more clear answer to this question would to be take a quick look back at Minerva.

Remember how I said Minerva was so hyped up based on a two second appearance in the ep3 trailer? Granted, we did have more than JUST her appearance to form this hype around.... but admit it, a huge part of the hype was how good she looked.

She looked awesome.

Hell, just seeing her had me excited to see what she would do in ep3, even though I had the feeling she wouldn’t be an ally.

I used to have a hard time wrapping my head around why so many people love her as much as they do, and I previously thought it was based a lot on her appearance.

Is it ignorant and shallow of me to think y’all loved her based solely on her looks?

Probably. Yes. Yes, it was.

Now that I’ve looked into this further, I see that there’s more to the love and interest surrounding her, but..... it’s kind of what my first thought was? In the beginning? 

Either way, it’s still an interesting idea to consider when thinking about a character you love.

With that said, what if we apply this question to a character who is less of a “Problematic Fave” and more of my “God Tier Fave.”

You all know that Louis is my favorite character across ALL the games. My love for him is vibrant, but one of the many things I love about him IS his character design. He’s a visually appealing guy, and his personality, different traits, dialogue, flaws, and character arc only build onto the attractiveness of his character.

If Louis didn’t look like this, would I still love him?

Assuming that everything else about him is the same, then yeah. 

What if the developers went with the concept art of him that looked like a odd Harry Styles knockoff? Would I still love him?

Again, I want to say that I would, assuming that everything else about him be the same. But going with that certain concept art does take away an important aspect of his character and his relationship to Clementine.

Many of you have told me how much you appreciate the fact that Clementine and Louis represent a sweet, healthy black couple. That’s important to all of us. If we went with the first concept art, then that’s something we’d lose. Would we still ship clouis? Probably, but again, that important element and representation is lost and that would affect our overall opinion of it, even if just a bit.

But, what if Louis looked exactly as he does now, but were to do something awful? Would I still love him?

Well, my first instinct is to say, “Yes.”

In ep3, Louis tells us that he purposely broke up his parents marriage because his father wouldn’t let him take singing lessons. He broke into his father’s credit cards and made it look like he had a mistress, then made sure his mother knew about it. He did this over the course of a year. Then, when the divorce was finalized, he threw his father’s words back in his face: “You get to be happy or you get to be rich. You can’t be both.”

Knowing this, I still love Louis.

What he did was awful, but the reason I don’t hate him or even like him any less is because of how he acted while telling us. You can feel the guilt and remorse in his voice, the shame that he was once a person who thought that was okay to do.

He did that a long time ago, he learned from this terrible mistake he made, went as far as to punish himself by taking on a irresponsible, piano-playing jokester persona who anyone rarely ever took seriously. Louis changed for the better and he’s still a likable, relatable, lovably character despite this.

But in order to dig a little deeper into this idea of attractiveness and just how far we’ll go to try and justify a character based solely on their looks, I then thought:

 “Okay, then consider this: What if Louis and Minerva switched places with him doing all those things she did that made me dislike her? Would I still love him?”

And things got a little complicated.

Because my immediate first thought was “Yes.”

That shocked the hell out of me.

Why the fuck would I be okay with LOUIS acting the way Minerva did, but not MINERVA herself? That makes no sense.

Louis betraying us on the boat by knocking Clementine out and locking her in the cell isn’t suddenly okay because it’s LOUIS.

Louis showing up on the bridge to try and murder Tenn isn’t suddenly okay because it’s him and not MINERVA.

The reality is this: If Louis and Minerva traded places, I wouldn’t love Louis. I don’t care how attractive his character design is, I would feel the same way about him that I feel about Minerva. I love Louis for who he is within the context of the canon game, but if Louis traded places with Minerva, he wouldn’t be that Louis that I love.

The problem with asking myself this is I know Louis’ character and I want to think the best of him. I’m attached to him. I don’t want to imagine him doing anything that horrible because I know that would be an breaking of his character. His appearance has nothing to do with it. 

But my first instinct was to side with him. 

That’s when it all came together.

A character’s appearance is important in the first impression, but our perception of that character’s attractiveness is only elevated or lowered based on the important things: personality, backstory, relationships, flaws, fears, regrets, change, and complete character arc. 

So how does this apply to my love for David?

Well, it eliminates any possibility that I only like David just because he’s pretty.

Perhaps I’m not so shallow after all.

Yeah, that’s the conclusion of this segment: something I already knew. But, I felt it was a concept that could spark some thought about what attractiveness really means while debunking any idiots who may grasp at straws with the insult of, “You only like [blank] and excuse their toxicity because you think they’re hot!”

... except the Life is Strange community might come after me for implying a nicer version of that towards one of the antagonists... but hopefully you understand the point I was attempting to make in bringing that up as an example.

I like David’s design, but him being an attractive dude isn’t why I like him. If anything, his looks being appealing to my eye is at the end of my long, complicated list of why I like him.

Conclusion:

Looks matter initially, and our perception of a character’s attractiveness is either elevated or lowered based on the more important qualities of their character, problematic or otherwise.

[continued in 4/?]

[dana-sculy]

Vive Ut Vivas - Chapter Two

→ Chapter One

It’s been 84 years since I wrote the first chapter of this story, I know, sorry it took me so long to continue to write it, hope you all enjoy! To read it in AO3 come here :)

tagging @today-in-fic

In this chapter, different from the first one, we'll see the story under Scully's perceptive. It's also a way to better explore her emotions and inner feelings of the situation. Plus, since in season 11 we came to learn more about Skinner's past and how he also had to deal with trauma, I decided to use that background in the conversations between him and Scully.

Prologue

I remember a time when I was only 5 years old. It was an ordinary day of summer, and mom had decided to take her children for a picnic in the park not far away from our house. She had little pots of everything with too much sugar and more packaging than the space-shuttle. Dad had been away on the sea for a long period of time, and even under the naïve perceptions of myself as a kid, it was possible to see how much she missed him. I don’t know if the picnic was an attempt of cheering the mood more for herself or for us. I should’ve been worried, but instead I just gave her my best smile and pulled out the fresh baked baguettes with brie and cranberry.

The air was warm that day, the beams of sunlight glowed on my skin. Melissa liked to sit close to the flowers and inspect them, under the freshly cut green grass. Charlie and Bill would start fighting with each other any time soon; it was sort of their motto. And that was my cue to go get and adventure by myself.

Looking back today, I wonder how could I and Melissa get along so well together. We were opposites in everything: she was the model, girly girl, who loved dresses, flowers, dolls and the piano lessons mom made sure we attended to. I was never that way. I loved dogs, sports and comfortable pants. I would only come inside home when mom called me with that tone of threat, which is the reason to my abundancy of freckles, due to hours and hours under the sun, climbing trees, running and playing around.

I was the tough child, I guess. Mel was the soft, popular one. That hasn’t changed much now that we’re adults. I still don’t go very well with softness; I keep it under tons of labored layers, deep inside.

This was mainly the reason I feared so badly to come here and stay with my sister. She has always had this thing of hers that somehow goes straight into your heart and sees everything. I’m a private, reserved person, and I like keeping my feelings only to myself. But that never really worked with Mel. Let’s say she would be very good at interrogations.

---

After what felt like an eternity, my tears, which eventually turned into little sobs, finally went away. At some point, Melissa’s tightened her hold on me; there wasn’t much else she could do about the whole situation for now. I ran my fingers through her knuckles, and she released me slowly.

“I guess I’ll be going, Mel.” – I feel terrible for leaving her after such an intimate moment, and especially because I know she’ll have a lot of other questions for me now.

“Work stuff you said, right?” – She sounds discouraged, but not mad, at the very least.

“Yes. Skinner had called me in the morning and he’s expecting me at the Bureau. So… I’d better be on my way.” – I rise from the couch and start to collect my things, stuffing them in my purse. It feels weird, not having my badge with me.

I say goodbye to my sister without turning to look back at her. If I did that, she would find her way into convincing me to stay. Even so, I can still feel her eyes burning on me, absorbing each detail, each movement I do. I close the door quietly and follow my way down the stairs of her building.

---

FBI headquarters  - 3:00 p.m.

There is a feeling: it starts when you enter a place you’ve already been a thousand times before, and yet, when you look around, you feel like it’s not the same, even though nothing’s really changed. You try desperately to find out what is different, but the only thing you find is a bitter taste in the back of your mouth, a feeling of intrusion, as if you were the wrong peace of a puzzle, trying to fit in.

I enter through the front door, the big cement columns threatening to smash my tiny figure as I pass them to go through the metal detector machine.

As the elevator doors open, I feel a sense of relief as I notice it’s empty. I am aware that my abduction has made me quite a popular person in the bureau, as if being part of the X Files division hadn’t already granted me that. Mulder talked with me about how a few people, whose existence he’s never known before, had stopped him at the corridor to ask if Mrs. Spooky had been taken by his fellow aliens, or simply to know what really happened to me.

Being a woman in a field that is predominantly occupied by men has taught me that the standards are never equal when it comes to gender difference. I had to work harder than most of my male colleagues at Quantico to stand out, and now as an agent, I feel more than grateful to be Mulder’s partner, because, unlike the others, he treats me like an equal, recognizing my work as an agent without making me feel less capable due to being a woman, and protecting me when it’s needed without making me feel like I couldn’t handle myself.

The problem in that is that it often makes me forget how mean the rest of the bureau can be. I realize I wasn’t that lucky when the elevator doors open again, now in Skinner’s office floor, and I see a very crowded hall ready to swallow me up.

The loud noise of my high heels coming in contact with the floor fill my ears and I feel my body threatening to throw up all the remnants of the cheap lunch I had back at the hospital. I walk silently, looking straight away and trying my best to avoid the curious eyes that follow me. I hear whispers too, but my ears don’t register any words being said. My mind is way too busy fighting to keep me standing and moving forward. Thank God Skinner’s office is not so far from the elevator itself, and I get there quickly enough.

Arlene’s attention is instantly drawn to the creaking door as I open it, increasing considerably as she recognizes my singular figure entering the precinct. She tries her best to be discreet, though. She even gives me a little smile, embarrassed with the whole situation.

“Agent Scully, you can go inside. Mr. Skinner is already waiting for you.” – with that, she returns to typing in her computer.

Skinner is indeed expecting me as I walk to a chair in his conference table. Different from the others, he doesn’t show any sign of curiosity or pity. I feel immensely thankful for that, so I give him a smile. I’m well aware that the evaluation is merely standard procedure, not to mention that it’s just me and Skinner there, but, still, the knot in my stomach doesn’t subside a bit. I guess after all that’s happened, my mind had gotten a little susceptible to Mulder’s paranoia of breaking The X-Files division, and shutting our careers down along with that. Let’s not think about that right now, Dana. I turn the focus of my mind on taking long, deep breaths.

“Agent, Scully, it’s a relief to see you well.” – Skinner is sincere in his words, as he looks straight into my eyes to show me he means it. – “I hope you understand the need of this procedure. You were under a highly stressful situation and that requires a bureau evaluation, to make sure you’re ready to go back to field”.

“Thank you, Sir, I understand. I just want to go back to work as soon as I can.” – And forget this nightmare, I think to myself. For a moment, I wish Mulder could be here. His crack jokes and sassy faces would certainly help lighten the mood.

I remember Mulder with that thought, how he was worried with me coming back so soon, how he couldn’t help himself in hiding his desire to have my company back, despite that. My memory traces the lines of our office: the dusty shells of stuff Mulder makes sure to keep there, his table, his geek poster I came to like with time, the silly green alien key chain he bought me last summer, while lecturing me about how aliens are actually grey. It gives my heart some comfort to remember something so familiar to me.

“Good to hear that, agent. So, let’s begin, shall we?”

Thereby, Skinner starts to present me a series of routine questions, then about standard FBI procedure, and, finally, questions with, I suppose, a more psychological approach. Turns out it’s not that bad, after all. I feel relieved.

After I give my last answer, he pauses, closing his eyes for a bit. He uses the tips of his long fingers to massage his temples, and then takes a deep breath.

“If you allow me, Dana, I’d like to talk to you, off the record.”

I realize I won’t escape personal interrogations today, so I give him a week nod.

“Listen… Your test shows no reason to keep you away from work. That said, I’m letting you know you can return to work any time.”

“I see a ‘but’ coming” – I attempt to make a joke, but he doesn’t alter his serious face.

“Well, yes, indeed. As your boss, I’ll tag along with the evaluation, but as your friend, I’d like to advise you to go home, Dana. You’ll continue to be paid normally even if you take some more time off, and you really should do that. Go be with your family, go rest and give your body and soul time to heal. Trust me, I know the feeling. Your strength is increasing and your body seems better, so it feels like you’re ready to go back to action, but these wounds, Dana, they’re bigger than they look. They can threaten to unsettle your spirit in the most inconvenient of times, and I wouldn’t forgive myself if that caused another risk to your life, or to agent Mulder.”

He was probably right; I knew it in my heart. But how could I tell him that taking time was consuming me, that it was making me mourn over and over again all the things I lost during my abduction? I could no longer rest unless I was under the effect of my sleeping pills, or drowsy due to my strong medication, because when their effect passed away, all I could see in my mind was the same nightmare over and over again. I must've let out something, because when I turned my eyes back to Skinner’s, he had a bigger frown on his face.

“Don’t fight me on this, Dana. You’re the bravest agent I know, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need help.” – He waited for a response, so I opened my mouth in an attempt of an answer.

“Sir, I appreciate your concern, but I really need to work.” – I sigh – “I need something to focus my mind on. I’ll be careful, plus, Mulder will be there to help me.” – I try to give him my best sad-puppy face. It seems to work.

“That’s not the answer I hoped for.” – Now it’s his turn to sigh. – “But I know you well enough to understand that trying to convince you otherwise won’t make any difference.”

“Thank you for understanding that, Sir.” – As I rise from my seat, he speaks once again.

“Agent, as you’re released to come back to work, I want you to be aware that, due to the circumstances of your case, you’ll have to go through periodic psychological counseling. That is not negotiable, agent Scully, but don’t worry, everything you say during session will remain private, these routine sessions are just to make sure you recover from your experience.”

I nod to him and find my way to the door, but he calls my name when I’m about to leave the room.

“Just one more thing, Dana.” – I turn to him. – “As you return, if you feel like you can’t stand a situation, anytime, my offer stands. Promise me you’ll accept help from the ones closer to you.”

From all the times Mulder and I had to count on Skinner’s assistance, I’ve learned to trust him and to believe in the fact that he really cares for us both, but now, from the way he says this words and the look on his face, I feel like this is more than just concern for me. It feels personal, and I’m inclined to conclude that he’s had his amount of trauma too.

“I promise.” – I tell him and leave, there’s a basement I have to go to.

[devilrising]

Fallen Draco, Pt. 3

This story follows a prompt by @mymindsmadness

Summary: AU where Draco is a fallen angel, and the way he gets his wings back is by guiding Harry in defeating Voldemort, but it all goes wrong when Draco starts falling in love with Harry.

Word Count (Pt. 3): 3119

Word Count (Total): 9032

Rating: Mature

Warnings: Mentions of abuse/torture (non-graphic)

***

31st March, 1998

I watch as the clock next to me ticks over to midnight. Tuesday. Potter is still looking at me pointedly, waiting for me to pick up the robes. They are black as night, the perfect cover for me to slip under. For him to break me out of St. Mungo’s. My stomach clenches, knots riddling inside of me, tangling up. I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to put myself in danger once again, susceptible to my Father’s demons. But I can’t stay here. I’ll be found, caught. And then I’ll be back right where I left, but I imagine it would be a lot worse. What am I doing?

Potter sighs heavily before backing out of the room. In the doorway he whispers, “It’s fine if you don’t want to. I just thought-”

I cut him off by leaping out of the bed, clutching at the long robes. He gapes as I rush to remove my hospital clothes and throw the black fabric over me. I pull the oversized hood on, letting it fall onto my head. Potter smiles for a second before realising what exactly we’re doing.

He hurries to cast a cleaning charm over himself, removing all the blood and dirt that was caked on thick. Pointing his wand at his face, he then casts a Glamour. His scar vanished from sight, replaced with a pale patch of skin. I watch as all of his flesh slowly fades as well, leaving behind skin just darker than my own. Then he waves his holly wand above his hair, and it starts shortening and fading. What’s left is startling unlike him. The mop of black hair is now a cropped sandy-brown cut, and he looks rather strange. He conjures a small mirror to judge his disguise, and nods.

Turning to me, Potter raises his wand to my face. I instinctively flinch, before forcing myself to relax. A sorry-almost-pitying expression crosses his features, his emerald green eyes creased, and he quickly starts moving his wand as a distraction. I feel nothing changing, and I can’t see anything from beneath the thick cover-up I’m wearing, but Potter spends ages redoing his work. Making sure I’m completely unrecognisable. When he spins the mirror to face me, I almost gasp. My skin is still pale, but now it’s cool toned and covered with freckles. Red tinges poke through at odd places, and one particular patch draws my attention up to my hair. The neat, platinum blond is gone, replaced with strawberry blond tresses curling at the end. My eyes are no longer grey, but rather a pretty silver, the colour I’ve always wished for.

The nose and mouth resting on my face are different as well. Both are thinner, the nose is shorter and rather like McGonagall’s. My lips have changed colour and are now an odd orange instead of a pale pink. There is nothing familiar about my reflection, and I feel detached from the person I look like. Potter is inspecting my face, checking that it still disguises me. I purse my lips and turn the mirror away, passing it back to him. He waves his wand again and sicards the conjured mirror. He straightens the bed sheets out with a charm and quickly scribbles a note onto a scrap of parchment. He spello-tapes the note onto the back of the door and I catch a glance at it.

‘Mr. Malfoy has been relocated to another ward for his recovery. Do not follow up on his injuries, and mention him to no one.’

A warm feeling trickles up my spine, and I’m reassured. For the moment. Maybe Father won’t be able to find me. Potter is watching me again, and I nod at him silently. He pulls up his own hood (when did he get those robes?) and grabs my hand. I open my door and we walk out into the corridor.

***

St Mungo’s looks rather sad behind us. Instead of the bright hospital that’s inside, the exterior is another story. The red-bricked department store “Purge and Dowse, Ltd.” looks like it’s stuck in the 70s. It’s tiny, dark, and cramped. It’s perfect. The muggles passing by don’t pay it any attention, pretending that the monstrosity of a building doesn’t exist. Potter is still holding my hand, and I yank it away. He says nothing, continuing to walk through the criss-cross of messy London streets. I have no idea where we are, or where we’re going, but he seems to have a clear picture in his mind.

Potter trudges through various streets, all of which are quiet and seemingly unused by the public. When we accidentally come across a well lit, busy street, a chill races within me. The man next to me groans and grabs my hand. Before I have time to complain he leans in close to me, mouth to my ear. “We have to pretend, Malfoy.” I open my mouth to ask what exactly he means by that, when it hits me. We are teenagers in Muggle London, at midnight, wearing robes. Potter is holding my hand tightly, gripping me to him. Here, we are together. Questions won’t be asked and we will be able to slip between people relatively unnoticed. Boyfriends. It’s a brilliant idea, but I don’t quite fancy it.

I twist to him, about to argue, but I never get the chance. I’m suddenly being pulled across a street. Lights of red are on either side of me, with a bright green one in front. The green matches Potter’s eyes, and I feel slightly dizzy. The ground beneath me is striped with white, and a purring sound surrounds me. Of course. Muggle London. The odd, curved, shiny metal things carrying people are ‘cars’. My head swims, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Inside the cars, there is at least one muggle holding onto a circle with shapes cut out of it. This circle seems to control which way the car moves. Before I can figure anything else out, we are on the other side of the road.

Potter doesn’t slow at all, dragging me down a path. Shops line the street, most displaying a sign reading ‘Sorry, we’re closed.’ I look into each of the shops we pass, staring past our reflections and beyond the glass. Clothes make up the majority of what I see, hung up and folded in some sort of order. These particular stores often have people look-alikes standing at the front, presumably wearing some of the clothes sold in-store. Other shops are covered in pictures of tropic islands and of Europe, buildings covered wall-to-wall with massive machines that apparently dispense money, and shops filled with antiques and gifts.

Potter ducks into another alley and releases my hand. “We’ll Side-Along.” I nod hurriedly, wanting to be away from the muggles with their weird machines and inventions. Clutching onto Potter’s extended arm, I prepare for the queasy sensation of apparating. The world goes black for a split second, everything closing in on us and squishing down. And then it’s stopped, and we are standing on yet another street. This one seems quiet but still in use, and dingy houses dot the ground near the road. It’s a suburban street. The streetlights are dim, not emitting enough light to see clearly by, but I manage to notice that the houses look mostly abandoned. Potter walks forward and I let my arm drop back to my side. I watch as he walks up to two of the houses, looking expectantly at the seam. He notices that my arm is gone, and grabs for me again.

As he takes my hand, I see what he’s looking at. Another house is emerging, forcing itself out from between the two next to it. Instantly I know why I couldn’t see it.

“A Fidelius Charm…” I whisper.

“Yes,” Potter confirms bluntly. He leads me up the steps and draws his wand. I flinch at the holly length but release a sigh when he merely points it to the door. He murmurs something I can’t hear and pushes the battered door open. A long hallway comes into view, and I scrunch up my nose. The carpet is dirty and wearing thin, and the wallpaper is literally peeling off the walls. Serpents decorate the corridor, all of which are rusty and dull. I sweep my gaze up and down again, and spot a particularly ugly umbrella stand that’s made from a troll leg.

“I know, it’s hideous,” Potter deadpans.

“It’s the Black house.” It’s not a question, I know what it is.

“Was. It’s mine now.”

“You can keep it,” I sneer, “its revolting.”

“Gee thanks.”

I nod at him and start to pace up the hallway. Portraits hang off the walls, each of them depicting a different relative of mine. They are clearly well done, but a layer of dust coats the paint. As I move through the ground floor, I take everything in. I’ve never actually entered the house. My parents thought, rightfully so, that it was an embarrassment that shouldn’t be mentioned. Spider webs cling to the ceiling, and I shudder as I pass under them.

“Want something to eat?”

I turn at Potter’s awkward attempt at small talk. “No thanks.”

“Look. I know this place is dingy, but nothing I try fixes it.” He pauses, glancing down to the doorway at my left. “Besides, you have to eat at some point.”

I scoff loudly and enter the dining room. It’s a long room with a massive table in the middle, easily as big as the table at the Manor. Light fixtures hang from the ceiling, glowing faintly. “This room is better,” I say. The amount of dust is dramatically less than in the entrance, and the furniture isn’t crumbling to splinters. I still don’t particularly want to stay in it for too long though.

“Thanks Malfoy,” Potter replies. The git actually sounds pleased.

I exit the dining room and continue down the entryway. There is a stone door at the very end, and I hesitantly push it open.

“I wouldn’t go down there if I were you.”

“How come?” My voice is steady with a hint of judgemental.

“It’s worse than here.”

“I find that hard to believe,” I drawl. “What’s through there?”

“Technically it’s the basement, but the kitchen’s there too.” Potter has the sense to look sheepish at the fact that his kitchen is revolting and grimy, so I decide I’ll do as he wishes and look somewhere else.

I turn around and start going up the long flight stairs. I screw up my features at the House Elf heads stuck to the wall and keep my eyes down. When I reach the first landing, I gratefully step away from the stairs. This floor is much cleaner than the lower one and I gaze around, intrigued. There appears to be at least one bedroom, a bathroom, and a drawing room. I make a beeline for the latter, hoping to find somewhere to sit down. Instead, I halt immediately. There is a massive tapestry on the walls, covered in names and faces. It’s the Black family tree. My eyes rake over everyone, saying the names I know off by heart. I don’t recognise some of them, all of which are beneath a black, burned circle covering someone’s face. It seems I haven’t been taught about the people who disappointed the family.

Out of the corner of my eye I spot my mother’s name and face, and walk over to it. My hand lightly caresses the tapestry, and I feel a pang in my chest. Where is Mother? Potter said she was safe…

“She’s in a room upstairs, sleeping deeply.” His voice cuts through the silence and startles me. “I saw you looking, thought that’s what you might’ve been thinking,” he shrugs at me. I narrow my eyes at how easily he figured my thoughts out, but decide it’s ultimately not worth pondering over. We have always paid lots of attention to each other.

“Take me to her.” I swallow heavily around a lump in my throat as I’m led up another flight of stairs. This landing is smaller, but has more bedrooms. The second door is shut, and I walk carefully up to it. The gentle steps don’t stop the floor creaking, but it must help. I glance at the rooms next to it, and nearly barf at the state they are in. I close both of the doors on either side of the middle one and lock them to deal with later. I push open the door to my mother and step inside. The bedroom is clean and plain, lacking all of the decorations in the others. Potter has clearly cleaned it out in preparation for her. There is a table with potion bottles sitting on it, as well as a cup of water and some food under stasis charms.

I make my way to Mother, and my heart momentarily shatters. She looks so fragile, lying there. Her grey hair is fanned out on the soft white pillow, her eyes shut tight. I walk up and take my spot next to her. I reach out and take her sickly-pale hand into my own. My eyes burn and for a second I think I’m going to cry, but I don’t let myself. She isn’t gone. Not yet.

***

1st April, 1998

Potter has put me in the bedroom on the first floor. I hated it for the first little while, sitting in the uncomfortable bed sulking. But then I decided that I should do something about it instead of wallowing. So I did. I started with cleaning charms to remove some of the dust and debris, but quickly realised that it was doing nothing. After that revelation, I had started doing it by hand. Moving the rubbish and old furniture into the corridor was easy enough, most of it being deceivingly light. The dust, however, was another story. It was fairly simple to sweep it into multiple little piles, but what to do after that I had had no idea.

Eventually I had realised that I could just shove it into a bag and throw it out, so that’s what I did. I looked around the room and was quite happy with my progress. And then the walls had caught my attention. I remember scowling so hard my face hurt, before viciously ripping at the paper. By the time my disgust had worn away, most of the wallpaper was scattered on the floor. I also swept that up into a bag, and then removed the rest civilly with the help of some water and a lot of patience. All the while I was doing that, the carpet under my feet was starting to fall apart. The soles of my feet had hurt and I was growing tired. I took a break for a while, moving downstairs and finding something to eat in that truly horrendous kitchen.

I was refreshed when I paced back up the stairs and into my room, so I decided to tear up the mouldy carpet. While doing so, some wooden floorboards appeared. They were old and stained a disgusting warm tone, but they were better than the carpet. I hauled all the scraps out into the corridor next to the bags of dust and the debris, before Vanishing the lot of it. Now the room resembles more of a box than a bedroom, but it is much better than when I started. I still hate it, mind, but at least now it’s cleaner.

“You should order some paint and stainer.”

Potters input scares me, and I wonder how long he’s been standing in the doorway. “Weren’t you at the Ministry?”

“Yep. Left hours ago, decided to meet with ‘Mione and Ron in their hideout.”

“Oh, ok.” I pause, looking him up and down. His clothing is filthy, blood-stained and muddy. Why is he always covered in blood?

“Have you been doing this all day?” Potter asks curiously.

“Guess so…”

“Like some help?”

“From you? No thanks,” I insult. “You’d probably make it worse than when I started,” I joke.

“Probably,” he replies absently.

We lapse into silence, neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. I take this time to really look around at my work. The walls are stripped bare to reveal an off-white colour beneath, the removed carpet showing floorboards that are in a fairly decent condition despite their age, and the lack of dust and debris makes the room seem bigger and brighter. The only current problem needing fixing is that there is no bed.

“I should go get some furniture,” I utter awkwardly.

“No!” Potter cries. “You can not leave this house!”

“Why not?!” I yell, indignant.

“It’s dangerous Malfoy!”

“How so?”

“Your father is most likely tracking you down right this second, Voldemort will be beyond it with rage, and they both have a whole army of Death Eaters at their finger tips! Not to mention that the public would be more than likely to turn you in!” Potter reasons.

I stare at him. His Glamour is long gone, and his tan skin is flushed in anger and desperation. I sigh loudly and nod, accepting my fate. It is just too risky to leave, and I would probably be killed instantly. But something is itching at the back of my mind. “If the public wants to turn me in…” I start, “why haven’t you?”

Potter’s expression falters, his posture tightening. He closes up from me, crossing his arms in front of his chest. For a second, I don’t think he’s going to answer me.

“Because.”

“That’s hardly a response,” I roll my eyes.

“Because,” he sighs, “I’ve always been oddly aware of you. I couldn’t bear to have you killed.”

I freeze. Oddly aware. Couldn’t bear to have you killed. It sounds like he’s some sort of friend, not my enemy from since we were eleven years old. I contemplate his confession, and realise that I feel the same. I have always noticed random things about Potter that others miss. I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t torment him, make his life miserable. He’s been such a big part of my childhood, making his life miserable was my favourite hobby. And despite everything, he saved me.

I slowly feel the tension drain from my body, and I turn my eyes to Potter. I take in his expression of ‘what did I just say?’ and ‘it was true anyway’ just as a blinding white light hits me. Pain sears up my body and I feel my back threaten to split open. It’s happening…

***

A/N: I am so sorry this has taken weeks to get up! I have been extremely busy with university, and have had no time to write. This should now be back to its normal schedule. Please let me know if you want to be tagged. Xx

Masterlist — Previous Part — Next Part

@draconianhorntail @megggg12 @edgy-things @queeneyart @ohheavenlylord @h0pehauntedmyw0rld @unsolicted-chick-picks @itsclayclay @harrybpoetry @slash-slut @jianing2603 @magical-fairy-princess-stuff @give-me-the-queer @youmakeprettybeautiful @hello-i-am-moi @slytherclaw134689 @sinnysin-sin @tony-stark-prorection-squad @rebelwolf91017 @irrelevantdrarry @glo-up-goddess @birdy1032 @d-addict @pizzasandwich72 @madison-is-a-small-baby @joshoriande @sugarhoneyice-t @imaginemymemories @shipperofalltheships @uniiicornen @hihello-jikook @thewanderingnomadsworld @randominternetloser @levi7755 @onewholovesnovels @localxmermaid

[sciencespies]

What Neuroscientists Are Discovering About Stuttering

https://sciencespies.com/nature/what-neuroscientists-are-discovering-about-stuttering/

What Neuroscientists Are Discovering About Stuttering

Gerald Maguire has stuttered since childhood, but you might not guess it from talking to him. For the past 25 years, Maguire — a psychiatrist at the University of California, Riverside — has been treating his disorder with antipsychotic medications not officially approved for the condition. Only with careful attention might you discern his occasional stumble on multisyllabic words like “statistically” and “pharmaceutical.”

Maguire has plenty of company: More than 70 million people worldwide, including about 3 million Americans, stutter — that is, they have difficulty with the starting and timing of speech, resulting in halting and repetition. That number includes approximately 5 percent of children, many of whom outgrow the condition, and 1 percent of adults. Their numbers include presidential candidate Joe Biden, deep-voiced actor James Earl Jones and actress Emily Blunt. Though those people and many others, including Maguire, have achieved career success, stuttering can contribute to social anxiety and draw ridicule or discrimination by others.

Maguire has been treating people who stutter, and researching potential treatments, for decades. He receives daily emails from people who want to try medications, join his trials, or even donate their brains to his university when they die. He’s now embarking on a clinical trial of a new medication, called ecopipam, that streamlined speech and improved quality of life in a small pilot study in 2019.

Many famous people have a stutter or did so as a child, including (left to right) presidential candidate Joe Biden, actor James Earl Jones and actor Emily Blunt.

(Left to Right: Michael Stokes; U.S. Embassy photo by S.J. Mayhew; Gage Skidmore)

Others, meanwhile, are delving into the root causes of stuttering, which also may point to novel treatments. In past decades, therapists mistakenly attributed stuttering to defects of the tongue and voice box, to anxiety, trauma or even poor parenting — and some still do. Yet others have long suspected that neurological problems might underlie stuttering, says J. Scott Yaruss, a speech-language pathologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. The first data to back up that hunch came in 1991, Yaruss says, when researchers reported altered blood flow in the brains of people who stuttered. Over the past two decades, continuing research has made it more apparent that stuttering is all in the brain.

“We are in the middle of an absolute explosion of knowledge being developed about stuttering,” Yaruss says.

There’s still a lot to figure out, though. Neuroscientists have observed subtle differences in the brains of people who stutter, but they can’t be certain if those differences are the cause or a result of the stutter. Geneticists are identifying variations in certain genes that predispose a person to stutter, but the genes themselves are puzzling: Only recently have their links to brain anatomy become apparent.

Maguire, meanwhile, is pursuing treatments based on dopamine, a chemical messenger in the brain that helps to regulate emotions and movement (precise muscle movements, of course, are needed for intelligible speech). Scientists are just beginning to braid these disparate threads together, even as they forge ahead with early testing for treatments based on their discoveries.

Slowed circuitry

Looking at a standard brain scan of someone who stutters, a radiologist won’t notice anything amiss. It’s only when experts look closely, with specialized technology that shows the brain’s in-depth structure and activity during speech, that subtle differences between groups who do and don’t stutter become apparent.

The problem isn’t confined to one part of the brain. Rather, it’s all about connections between different parts, says speech-language pathologist and neuroscientist Soo-Eun Chang of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. For example, in the brain’s left hemisphere, people who stutter often appear to have slightly weaker connections between the areas responsible for hearing and for the movements that generate speech. Chang has also observed structural differences in the corpus callosum, the big bundle of nerve fibers that links the left and right hemispheres of the brain.

These findings hint that stuttering might result from slight delays in communication between parts of the brain. Speech, Chang suggests, would be particularly susceptible to such delays because it must be coordinated at lightning speed.

Chang has been trying to understand why about 80 percent of kids who stutter grow up to have normal speech patterns, while the other 20 percent continue to stutter into adulthood. Stuttering typically begins when children first start stringing words together into simple sentences, around age 2. Chang studies children for up to four years, starting as early as possible, looking for changing patterns in brain scans.

It’s no easy feat to convince such young children to hold still in a giant, thumping, brain-imaging machine. The team has embellished the scanner with decorations that hide all the scary parts. (“It looks like an ocean adventure,” Chang says.) In kids who lose their stutter, Chang’s team has observed that the connections between areas involved in hearing and ones involved in speech movements get stronger over time. But that doesn’t happen in children who continue to stutter.

In another study, Chang’s group looked at how the different parts of the brain work simultaneously, or don’t, using blood flow as a proxy for activity. They found a link between stuttering and a brain circuit called the default mode network, which has roles in ruminating over one’s past or future activities, as well as daydreaming. In children who stutter, the default mode network seems to insert itself — like a third person butting in on a romantic date — into the conversation between networks responsible for focusing attention and creating movements. That could also slow speech production, she says.

These changes to brain development or structure might be rooted in a person’s genes, but an understanding of this part of the problem has also taken time to mature.

All in the family

In early 2001, geneticist Dennis Drayna received a surprising email: “I am from Cameroon, West Africa. My father was a chief. He had three wives and I have 21 full and half siblings. Almost all of us stutter,” Drayna recalls it saying. “Do you suppose there could be something genetic in my family?”

Drayna, who worked at the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders, already had a longstanding interest in the inheritance of stuttering. His uncle and elder brother stuttered, and his twin sons did so as children. But he was reluctant to make a transatlantic journey based on an email, and wary that his clinical skills weren’t up to analyzing the family’s symptoms. He mentioned the email to current National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins (director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at that time), who encouraged him to check it out, so he booked a ticket to Africa. He has also traveled to Pakistan, where intermarriage of cousins can reveal gene variants linked to genetic disorders in their children.

Even with those families, finding the genes was slow going: Stuttering isn’t inherited in simple patterns like blood types or freckles are. But eventually, Drayna’s team identified mutations in four genes — GNPTAB, GNPTG and NAGPA from the Pakistan studies, and AP4E1 from the clan in Cameroon — that he estimates may underlie as many as one in five cases of stuttering.

Oddly, none of the genes that Drayna identified have an obvious connection to speech. Rather, they all are involved in sending cellular materials to the waste-recycling compartment called the lysosome. It took more work before Drayna’s team linked the genes to brain activity.

They started by engineering mice to have one of the mutations they’d observed in people, in the mouse version of GNPTAB, to see if it affected the mice’s vocalizations . Mice can be quite chatty, but much of their conversation takes place in an ultrasonic range that people can’t hear. Recording the ultrasonic calls of pups, the team observed patterns similar to human stuttering. “They have all these gaps and pauses in their train of vocalizations,” says Drayna, who cowrote an overview of genetics research on speech and language disorders for the Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics.

Still, the team struggled to spot any clear defect in the animals’ brains — until one determined researcher found that there were fewer of the cells called astrocytes in the corpus callosum. Astrocytes do big jobs that are essential for nerve activity: providing the nerves with fuel, for example, and collecting wastes. Perhaps, Drayna muses, the limited astrocyte population slows down communication between the brain hemispheres by a tiny bit, only noticeable in speech.

Researchers created mice with a mutation in a gene that, in people, is linked to stuttering. The mutant mice vocalized haltingly, with longer pauses between syllables, similar to what’s seen in human stuttering.

(Adapted from T.D. Barnes et al./Current Biology 2016; T.Han et al./PNAS 2019; Knowable Magazine)

​

Drayna’s research has received mixed reviews. “It’s really been the pioneering work in the field,” says Angela Morgan, a speech-language pathologist at the University of Melbourne and Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia. On the other hand, Maguire has long doubted that mutations in such important genes, used in nearly all cells, could cause defects only in the corpus callosum, and only in speech. He also finds it difficult to compare mouse squeaks to human speech. “That’s a bit of a stretch,” he says.

Scientists are sure there are more stuttering genes to find. Drayna has retired, but Morgan and collaborators are initiating a large-scale study in the hopes of identifying additional genetic contributors in more than 10,000 people.

The dopamine connection

Maguire has been tackling stuttering from a very different angle: investigating the role of dopamine, a key signaling molecule in the brain. Dopamine can ramp up or down the activity of neurons, depending on the brain location and the nerve receptors it sticks to. There are five different dopamine receptors (named D1, D2, and so on) that pick up the signal and respond.

During the 1990s, Maguire and colleagues were among the first to use a certain kind of brain scan, positron emission tomography, on people who stutter. They found too much dopamine activity in these people’s brains. That extra dopamine seems to stifle the activity of some of the brain regions that Chang and others have linked to stuttering.

Backing up the dopamine connection, other researchers reported in 2009 that people with a certain version of the D2 receptor gene, one that indirectly enhances dopamine activity, are more likely to stutter.

So Maguire wondered: Could blocking dopamine be the answer? Conveniently, antipsychotic drugs do just that. Over the years, Maguire has conducted small, successful clinical studies with these medications including risperidone, olanzapine and lurasidone. (Personally, he prefers the last because it doesn’t cause as much weight gain as the others.) The result: “Your stuttering won’t completely go away, but we can treat it,” he says.

None of those medications are approved for stuttering by the US Food and Drug Administration, and they can cause unpleasant side effects, not just weight gain but also muscle stiffness and impaired movement. In part, that’s because they act on the D2 version of the dopamine receptor. Maguire’s new medication, ecopipam, works on the D1 version, which he expects will diminish some side effects — though he’ll have to watch for others, such as weight loss and depression.

In a small study of 10 volunteers, Maguire, Yaruss and colleagues found that people who took ecopipam stuttered less than they did pre-treatment. Quality-of-life scores, related to feelings such as helplessness or acceptance of their stutter, also improved for some participants.

Ten adult volunteers who stuttered were given ecopipam, a drug that blocks one version of the dopamine receptor, for 8 weeks. They stuttered significantly less when they were on the drug than they had before the treatment.

(G.A. Maguire et al./Annals of Clinical Psychiatry 2019/Knowable Magazine)

Ecopipam isn’t the only treatment under consideration. Back in Michigan, Chang hopes that stimulation of specific parts of the brain during speech could improve fluency. The team uses electrodes on the scalp to gently stimulate a segment of the hearing area, aiming to strengthen connections between that spot and the one that manages speech movements. (This causes a brief tickle sensation before fading, Chang says.) The researchers stimulate the brain while the person undergoes traditional speech therapy, hoping to enhance the therapy’s effects. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic, the team had to stop the study with 24 subjects out of a planned 50. They’re analyzing the data now.

Connecting the dots

Dopamine, cellular waste disposal, neural connectivity — how do they fit together? Chang notes that one of the brain’s circuits involved in stuttering includes two areas that make and use dopamine, which might help explain why dopamine is important in the disorder.

She hopes that neuroimaging can unite the different ideas. As a first stab, she and collaborators compared the problem areas identified by her brain scans to maps of where various genes are active in the brain. Two of Drayna’s genes, GNPTG and NAGPA, were active at high levels in the speech and hearing network in the brains of non-stutterers, she saw. That suggests those genes are really needed in those areas, bolstering Drayna’s hypothesis that defects in the genes would interfere with speech.

The team also observed something novel: Genes involved in energy processing were active in the speech and hearing areas. There’s a big rise in brain activity during the preschool years, when stuttering tends to start, Chang says. Perhaps, she theorizes, those speech-processing regions don’t get all the energy they need at a time when they really need to be cranking at maximum power. With that in mind, she plans to look for mutations in those energy-control genes in children who stutter. “There are obviously a lot of dots that need to be connected,” she says.

Maguire is also connecting dots: He says he’s working on a theory to unite his work with Drayna’s genetic findings. Meanwhile, after struggling through med school interviews and choosing a career in talk therapy despite his difficulties with speech, he’s hopeful about ecopipam: With colleagues, he’s starting a new study that will compare 34 people on ecopipam with 34 on placebo. If that treatment ever becomes part of the standard stuttering tool kit, he will have realized a lifelong dream.

Knowable Magazine is an independent journalistic endeavor from Annual Reviews.

#Nature

[fountainpenguin]

So, not sure if someone asked this before, but what’s the typical drone lifestyle like? I know what a drone is and that they need pheromones, but what’s the day to day life of a drone? How do most get on with their gyne? If a drone found a gyne who treated them poorly but met their pheromones needs, would the drone recognize that and be able to seek out another gyne? Similarly, what would a gyne do if he had a drone he wanted to be rid of? Would that be possible?

You sound like someone who might be interested in the full transcript of the Cosmo Waterberry and Anti-Willow interview. Snippets of this interview appeared recently in Frayed Knots, but I actually wrote the entire thing while trying to work out what life for gynes and drones is like up close, and how that lifestyle looks to Anti-Fairy outsiders. You can read it HERE.

(Continued below the cut because long questions tend to get long answers. Also, to clarify, the / is used as a regular / and not to indicate romance.)

Terminology

Gyne - Large male Fairies with freckles who produce powerful pheromones; gynes are territorial and sometimes fight to the death

Drone - A male Fairy who is strongly influenced by pheromones; drones are rarely seen far from their gynes, and if they are, not for long

Kabouter - Neither a gyne nor a drone; less susceptible to the influence of pheromones and other aspects of animal biology

In the older days, one might say a drone “belonged” to a gyne, but this is not considered appropriate in modern Fairy society (saying a drone “lives with” a gyne is better)

Asking a drone for the name of “their gyne” would be appropriate if you don’t know the exact relation, but asking for their boss, father, brother, or friend is preferable if you do know the relation.

“Primary gyne” is considered a more appropriate phrase in modern Fairy society than simply “their gyne” (though I’ll use “their gyne” throughout this post)

A “secondary gyne” has the same connotation as “mistress” while “primary gyne” has the connotation “beloved, respectable partner”

A drone is described as being “in service” to their gyne; for example, Sanderson is in H.P.’s service

In older times, it was appropriate for a gyne to say “My drone(s),” but in modern times it’s more appropriate to use words such as “companions,” “friends,” or “assistants,” as modern Fairy society doesn’t consider it appropriate to out a drone (It’s more appropriate for a drone to reveal himself if he chooses to do so)

Anthro Insect Society

The eusocial gyne/drone structure is an integral part of Fairy biology and will never be wiped away in full. Don’t assume gyne/drone relationships are inherently abusive or dehumanizing. Also, please don’t read my fanfics about the cultures of magical anthropomorphic insect people and interpret them as me promoting slavery. I am merely a high fantasy author who researches animal behavior as a career choice, so that’s what my fanfics reflect.

Gyne/drone relationships have always been part of Fairy society, and public opinion has shifted throughout fae history. At times gynes and drones have been viewed as equals, at times as masters and servants, at times as though they’re family, and at times as though they’re intimate partners. Sometimes Fairy society views these relationships in a positive light, other times in a negative one.

Fairy society will never transition to a point where it’s decided that gyne and drone relationships are immoral and should be put completely to an end. They’re anthro insect people. This is their biology. Rather than dropping the practice altogether, Fairy society will eventually progress to being more fair for all. This will come in the form of drones being allowed more life options (as bottled pheromones become available to the public, for example) so that tethering themselves to a gyne is more a choice than a requirement.

A healthy Fairy society is not one that eradicates gyne/drone relationships altogether, but is one that respects the needs and rights of both parties and allows them to live the life most appropriate for them.

Structure

Despite the title “drone,” Fairy drones function like worker bees (while gynes are the queens, of course). In that interview transcript, Cosmo explained how he sees himself as part of his gyne’s family, even taking Jack’s surname for his own.

Jack’s family is HIS family. Jack’s wife is a sister-in-law to him and their kids are his nieces and nephews. Cosmo lives with them and helps out around the house like a third parent. Jack respects him and treats him well, but Cosmo is still a step below his wife. If the family were going to move, Jack and his wife would talk over the decisions in great detail, while Cosmo would be expected to go with the flow. As a drone, he’s not expected to have an opinion, but to faithfully follow Jack and support him in every way. This set-up is very common.

When more than one drone lives with a gyne, they’re called a retinue. One drone is given the title alpha, and takes the role of leader if the gyne isn’t around to give instructions. It just helps to have someone to settle disagreements (Too many cooks spoil the soup).

The closeness of the relationship can vary across gynes and drones. It’s common for an unmarried gyne to share his bed with a single drone, which is why Cosmo mentioned being confused when he wasn’t allowed to. In general, I would say most gynes tend to be very close with their drones up until they get married, and then their romantic partner ends up becoming their first priority. A well-balanced gyne won’t shove his drones aside, but things don’t always work out so ideally.

Abuse in gyne/drone relationships does happen now and again. In the Frayed Knots chapter “Age-Old Story,” we learned that Juandissimo’s father is a drone who doesn’t appear to have a happy life with his gyne, Jean Reddinski (who of course stood opposite Jack Waterberry during the Waterberry v. Reddinski case we saw earlier in Knots while discussing drone rights).

Juandissimo’s father is very aware of this, which is why we saw him trying to slip away when Anti-Cosmo arrived on the scene. In fact, Luis did slip away once upon a time and, desperate for companionship, somehow managed to find it in the genie who gave him his three kids. He was separated from two of them and more or less showed up on Jean’s doorstep with baby Juandissimo in his arms. They’ve lived together ever since, though Jean’s abuses increased after this due to jealousy and annoyance. Still, Luis never tried to leave again. Juandissimo was young and needed care, and Jean could provide it. Besides, if he did seek out another gyne, who’s to say that one wouldn’t be worse?

It is possible for a drone to leave a gyne, though it isn’t easy. A drone leaving a gyne would be the equivalent of a service dog running away from home: Physically possible, perhaps. Likely, no. Even if they do disappear for awhile, they tend to return to the gyne they’re familiar with. Perhaps future Fairy society will do a better job of investigating allegations of gyne/drone abuse, but in present day there isn’t an official drone relocation program or anything like that. Drones in troubled situations may seek out the members of their birth family, who will likely take them in if they can, but if you’re a drone without a caring family then you’re likely to end up with your former gyne again.

Drone Life

Drones can run small shops on their own, but it’s highly unlikely you would see one manage a large business, simply because drones are susceptible to the influence of strong pheromones and that’s not something that can ever be changed. Unless a drone has a lot of power behind him, it wouldn’t be hard to take advantage of one.

Gynes produce pheromones that relay information about strength and status to other Fairies. This is not a form of brainwashing or mind control, but it is an influence on other Fairies’ behavior. More on pheromones, gynes, drones, and how they interact can be found in the Pheromone Fervor post, HERE.

Like a queen bee’s retinue, a drone is an attendant to his gyne. He helps his gyne around the home or while out traveling. He functions as an extra pair of hands, eyes, and ears. There’s always a chance a lone gyne will be attacked by another since gynes are territorial, but the chance decreases if he has drones accompanying him.

Being able to satisfy drones with your pheromones is a sign of dominance. Having more drones also contributes to a gyne’s dominance (A CEO and the owner of a corner store are both heads of their business, but one is seen as more powerful than the other). The Head Pixie oversees more drones than any individual in fae history (due to being secluded with them in Pixie World), so he’s an extremely dominant individual no one would ever try to mug unless they’re also trying to assassinate him.

Drones spend a lot of time assisting their gynes in and out of the home. Even if engaged in free time activities such as drawing or playing games, it’s natural for them to keep an ear out for their gyne. If your gyne calls for you, then “Just a minute” is not the answer you would give. Sanderson is an extreme example of drones sticking close to their gynes, of course, but it’s a common trait across the board.

Drones are different from kabouters because kabouters are expected to make elaborate plans for their future. Fairies have long lifespans, so you’re expected to get around to doing everything you hope to do eventually. Gynes are expected to hold leadership positions and be very successful in life, so long as they maintain their dominance (and don’t get killed off by a more dominant gyne first).

Drones, however, are not expected to have detailed life plans. If you’re a drone with dreams, keep them quiet and consider yourself lucky if the stars happen to align in your favor. Your gyne is under no obligation to help you finish your bucket list. You’re provided with a home, a job, plenty of food, and companionship (generally speaking) in exchange for not pushing your agenda. Such is the drone lot in life.

Drones are considered valued members of a gyne’s family, but they are looked upon with appreciation and affection rather than as life partners who should have equal say in big decisions. They’re like service dogs: you appreciate all they do for you, but you wouldn’t ask your dog for an opinion on where you move or who you should marry. Sure, you might watch for reactions, but you’d (presumably) put your own desires first. Your dog is along for the ride.

Pheromones and Politics

Gynes don’t need pheromone exchanges like drones do. Drones do a lot better with pheromones than without them. Pheromones calm them, help them focus, and help them enjoy life. Without them, drones tend to experience mood swings, loss of focus, and lack of motivation.

If a gyne doesn’t want a drone, the only sure way short of murder is to visit another gyne and slip off while your drone is there. The drone may or may not be told about this in advance, depending on how close they are with their gyne. The drone will quickly adapt to the new gyne’s pheromones, and life goes on. Emotionally a drone may long for their old gyne or they may carry the sting of betrayal, but duty and loyalty will turn attention to their new gyne.

We’ll discuss this later in Origin and Knots (and it was hinted in the 130 Prompt “Minion”), but Anti-Cosmo once became more dominant than H.P. This was shortly after Anti-Cosmo became Sunnie’s medium, and he and H.P. were on a trip to celebrate the Pixie/Anti-Fairy alliance becoming official. Well, H.P. and Sanderson had a fight, and Sanderson ended up under Anti-Cosmo’s wing. Eventually he returned to H.P., but feels a tremendous amount of guilt to this day. 

Despite the guilt and regret, we’ve seen Sanderson describe the dominant aura Anti-Cosmo projects multiple times in my ‘fics (That time in the “Grooming” prompt is an especially good example). He’s a drone, he’s attracted to power, and he hates it. He’s plagued by nightmares that he’ll abandon H.P. for another gyne while H.P. is still alive… and that he won’t care. Sanderson may have lived with H.P. his entire life, but he knows what it feels like to be under the influence of another gyne’s pheromones. He knows it’s possible to be separated from H.P., fall under the spell of a cruel gyne who won’t release him, and have his personal choices ripped away… and the knowledge that he would nod and go along with it terrifies him.

Drones are influenced by pheromones, yes, but on rare occasions, a drone may be the one to call the shots in the relationship (Anti-Cosmo’s schoolmate Mickey was a gyne who thrilled in taking the traditionally submissive role in the relationship, for example). In the most recent chapter of Frayed Knots, “The Bar Code,” Anti-Cosmo met an unusual drone named Rupert. Rupert has a very domineering personality, and tends to get passed from gyne to gyne because most don’t want to deal with him.

Rupert’s personality is too strong for pheromones to sway him easily. He’s bold, proactive, and knows exactly what he wants. When we met him in “Bar Code,” he was in the company of a rather passive gyne named Arthur Cracklewings. It will quickly become apparent that Rupert is the real manager of the restaurant “the Cracklewings” family runs. He and Arthur travel together for safety reasons, but Arthur looks out for Rupert more than the other way around.

It is possible for drones to get by without being in the company of a gyne on a regular basis. It hasn’t been revealed yet, but there is one notable character in my ‘fics who lives like this, and you’ll see his secret come to light towards the end of this year. Rather than exchange pheromones with a gyne through preening, he exposes himself to bottled pheromones, which is a lot like putting on perfume.

Bottled pheromones aren’t exactly over-the-counter in present-day Fairy society, and won’t become easily available until later. Psychiatrists could prescribe bottled pheromones to parents of very young gynes, but no one looked at young drones and thought they needed those (Drones can only be born to gynes or other drones, so there is normally a gyne in the household to provide them pheromones already).

In Timmy’s time period, a drone can’t walk into a pharmacy and pick up a bottle of pheromones. If they speak with a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist would provide the drone’s gyne with resources to help them obtain their own gyne’s bottled pheromones (and it would normally be the gyne who spoke to the psychiatrist anyway- you’d expect a gyne to show up and explain they’re having an issue with their drone, rather than a drone come in and explain that he needs help). The 130 Prompt “Do the Math” is actually about Remy and Juandissimo investigating a scheme of “black market” bottled pheromone transportation, and that will be fun.

It’s only after Poof and Foop have their kids that Fairy society starts shifting to the point that drones can go in and buy their own bottled pheromones. We transition to a point in society where drones can live completely independently from contact with a gyne if they choose to. I’m not sure if this will be discussed in Devil’s Backbone, which is why I’m tempted to write another ‘fic after it concludes… We shall see.

[wndybird]

laughter pokes its way across misted eyes, dabbling cheeks with flecks of light. this child, the universe clutched in her palms, refusing to shed a thing.

MEET WENDY darling DARWIN.

OOC.

AUTHOR: ren, 20, est, she / they. CONTACT: my discord is ren 🎃✨#6401, pm me if you want my telegram or kik !!

BASIC.

NAME: wendy darwin

EXPLANATION:

wendy’s decision to cling to her true name was deliberate as an act to reclaim her sense of self , and to exercise some control over her life after the exodus took part of that from her. there’s also the added fact that it’s so much easier than trying to go by another name, which seems like a ridiculous amount of trouble to go through.

darwin was chosen out of ease , as well , being two letters off from her true surname and sounding fairly similar. behind the scenes , i chose it since its meaning is “ dear friend ” and i believed that would reference the supposed origin of wendy’s name well.

NICKNAMES: wen, wendybird, bird, little bird. ( i will sometimes call her wendigo, wendini, and wingdings. ) GENDER: cisfemale SEXUALITY: panromantic pansexual

OCCUPATION:

wendy is a full time student at the fable community college , and also works as a cashier at the local bookshop. she may sometimes take up the occasional odd job as a babysitter , a proofreader for other students , or even a tutor if she’s incredibly strapped for cash , but these are small side things that she only turns to when the going gets really tough.

she left her major as undeclared originally , as she wanted to be able to experience various differing courses , but has recently changed it so that she’s majoring in creative writing and minoring in journalism.

AGE: twenty BIRTH DATE: july 7th ZODIAC: cancer sun, sagittarius moon SECRET LANGUAGE: day , week , month , season , way , & personal path CELTIC ZODIAC: oak ( tree ) , wren ( animal ) BIRTHDAY TAROT: temperance , the hierophant

MAGIC:

wendy is not a magic user , though she will always quietly find herself envious of those who are. it’s possible that her curiosity and desire to be closer to the arcane may lead her into trying to practice , but that remains to be seen. otherwise she tries to function on the belief that magic is not just defined by the arcane , but little , every day things. like your headphones not tangling in your pocket , or your schedule lining up perfectly for the day , things of that nature.

PHYSICAL.

FACECLAIM: kristine froseth HEIGHT: 5’ WEIGHT: 126 lbs HAIR COLOR & STYLE: honey brown , long , wavy. usually kept down , sometimes half up , in a bun , braid , or ponytail. will occasionally do cute things like space buns , braided crowns , etc. EYE COLOR: blueee DOMINANT HAND: left DISTINGUISHING FEATURES: freckles , longass eyelashes , a birthmark on her right thigh , generally looking like a baby deer smh SCARS: she has a few very old , very faded scars across her feet and ankles from running about barefoot on neverland , but you probably wouldn’t notice them unless you were looking for them. PIERCINGS: earlobes TATTOOS: none yet

PERSONALITY.

MBTI: esfj KEIRSEY: guardian — provider ENNEAGRAM: type 2w3 

 ALIGNMENT & MORALS:

her heart is soft , but it is just. her alignment is lawful good , and she tries to operate on a set of clear , concise morals. her involvement with certain individuals may muddle this , at times , but her conscious is painfully loud and she will always be a voice of reason and a champion of what is right. her crux is that she is sometimes prone to bending too easily , as she still clings to her belief that no one can be all bad.

TRAITS:

( + ) optimistic , intelligent , honest , empathetic , brave , adventurous , friendly

( - ) idealistic , stubborn , nosy , susceptible , perfectionist , insecure , anxious

CONNECTIONS.

MOTHER: mary darling ( status: ??? ) FATHER: george darling ( status: ??? ) SIBLINGS: john darling ( status: alive. ) , michael darling ( status: deceased. ) PETS: eventually a dog in place of that abandoned wolf pup , maybe SIGNIFICANT OTHER: it’s complicated.

hello i LOVE to plot please come plot with me !!! i’ll have a legitimate connections page made soon i promise

IN CHARACTER INTERVIEW.

QUESTION TWO:

Was it hard adjusting to life in Fabletown? Do you miss the Homeworld?

Her heart twists until it aches, settling somewhere in her throat, and the soreness she feels there is terrible. She misses the Homeworld like you would not believe, yearns to return back to what she’s known up until recently, but she knows she must make the best of her situation. Wendy is nothing if not hopeful, and this is what keeps her afloat, even on the days when all she can do is sit at home, squinting into the distance, as she recalls her life before the Exodus. She smooths her skirt with trembling hands, the pleated navy fabric rustling silently, and straightens her back. She shouldn’t slouch. She knows better.

“I think the adjustment must have been difficult for everyone, myself included.” Wendy is not one to overlook the trials and tribulations of others, even as she herself struggles with the day-by-day of this new world. “Of course I miss the Homeworld, I miss it like the stars must miss the moon when the sun rises, I—I think it would not have been so hard, coming here, if I’d not felt as though I was leaving so much behind. But I’m sure the same can be said for most anyone in our… situation.” She doesn’t mention the nights that seemed to sprawl on, where she’d not slept for days, instead choosing to cry, or the days when her chest felt so hollow she was almost convinced she’d need to pick apart her ribs in order to find out whether or not she still possessed her heart.

A loose curl brushes her jawline, and she brushes it away, tucking it ever so gently behind her ear. “I’m still adjusting. It’s not been an easy task, by any means, but I believe part of our responsibility now is to remain adaptable. Besides that, it would be unfair to say that the change has been entirely terrible. We’ve been granted new opportunities, the ability to meet new people, there are so many new things to see and do.” It’s easier to treat this like something of an adventure, than to see it as a never-ending eternity. How familiar.

“I suppose, most of all, it’s important to stay hopeful.”

QUESTION THREE:

Where is your favorite place in Fabletown or New York?

The question is no sooner posed, and Wendy is smiling to herself, images of her loft conjured up within her imagination. It is certainly not the house in Bloomsbury, but it is her own, and she has made it as such. The walls are white, and would be considered bland, were they not adorned with pictures and artwork, string lights that cast the den in warm light. The couch is a mess of throw pillows and a particularly soft fleece throw, coffee table crowded with textbooks, notebooks, book-books, and the occasional succulent; everything is somewhat disorganized, but in the most organized way possible. Knick knacks line the shelves in her bedroom, tiny little things she’s picked up here and there, and none of them need a particular meaning in order to belong. Today, the apartment smells like chamomile tea and cinnamon, warm and cozy, safe and secure, like a blanket wrapped around your shoulders.

“My home, of course.” Her voice is filled with the sort of pride you’d hear a mother speak about her children’s accomplishments with, because truly, the home she has created for herself here in Fabletown is a safe haven, her own little alcove of personal magic. She may not be someone in tune with the arcane, but she can create her own version of magic, whether it be in how she interacts with others, or things she chooses to do for herself. Buying a new candle to soothe her nerves? Certainly. “It’s small, but I’d like to believe it’s welcoming. Filled with love, if you will, and I find that to be rather important.”

QUESTION FOUR:

How do you feel about magic? Do you think it should be banned, regulated, or neither?

Her eyes are aglow with enthusiasm at the mention of magic—such a wondrous little word that is, blanketing her heart in childhood nostalgia and the need to believe—but behind that lies a certain amount of trepidation. She has seen the danger that comes with placing unrestricted power in the hands of those who operate on their own rules, how magic can be used not only for wonder and creation, but for destruction and greed. If you would look hard enough, beneath the many layers of wonder and hesitancy, you would notice something else: the barest flicker of envy. Wendy is not one to become so often plagued by jealousy that she grows into something bitter and mean, but sometimes even she is not free of those resentful pangs. She has only ever been able to taste magic at the grace of another, and though she’s grateful for even a taste, it would be nice to be able to harness it for her own. If only for a day, even.

Her hands are clasped neatly in her lap, one thumb running over the other in time with her breathing. “I believe,” She begins, and then pauses, as though she must regather her thoughts. “I believe magic is an extraordinary thing.” Another pause, as the lush forests of Neverland appear behind her eyelids when she blinks, the tang of magic in the air, the sparkling lagoon, the mermaids—it shifts, and then something is very wrong. Grinning skulls peek through gilled skin, flashing sharp teeth and cavernous eye sockets that consume her like the void. It is enough to startle her back into shaken silence for a few long minutes, the ticking of the clock hanging on the far wall feeling awfully familiar as it tracks her silence.

“And as with all extraordinary things, there is the ever-present risk that someone will come along and ruin it, so to speak. Magic is a gift that some may be far too comfortable taking advantage of, for the wrong reasons.” Her words seem to be spoken with a sense of mourning underlying them, and the downward turn of her lips belies regret. Truly, she believes in the goodness of others, but logically she understands that without rules set in place, it would give too much allowance for evil to run wild. “If we lived in an ideal world, I would find no issue with letting magic flow freely, but in this case regulation is the safest choice.”

QUESTION FIVE:

Who do you think killed Little Red Riding Hood?

Minutes pass in silence as she glances around the room, as if the walls will afford her some secret knowledge, some right answer, as if one were to exist. Wendy has tried not to let her thoughts linger for far too long on what’s happened to Little Red Riding Hood, as if her denial would undo whatever had been done to the woman. Out of sight, out of mind, isn’t something that seems to exist, in this case. Teeth sink into her lower lip, and she chews although she knows better, nipping at glossy skin that will turn sore if she keeps it up.

“I don’t know. It’s not a satisfactory answer, I do know that much, but.. this isn’t something I’ve wanted to devote much time to. I don’t want to think about what happened to her, or worse yet, who could’ve done it—this is a terrible situation.” Violence has been present in her life far too often as of late, and her skin is littered with goosebumps now at the consideration that there may be a possibility that someone she knows could be a cause, or a suspect, at the least. Wendy places that thought within a box, seals it off, and places that into another box, on and on it goes, until the intrusive idea is locked away for the time being. Her eyes are apologetic, soft, tinged with fright. “But I hope justice is served, for her sake.”

PLAYLIST.

coming soon..

[egreed]

01. What does your character’s name mean? Did you pick it for the symbolism, or did you just like the way it sounded?

Fliis. She was originally a character from an original story that I never got around to putting to paper, but the reasons are the same. I wanted something soft for her name. Something that represented her incredible ability to remain gentle and soft and sweet even after everything she’s been through. 

02. What is one of your character’s biggest insecurities? Are they able to hide it easily or can others easily exploit this weakness? 

She is afraid of failure and letting people down. Sometimes she doesn’t use her head because she’s so busy thinking with her heart. She and Atrax are independent but she wants to provide better for them. This insecurity also makes her push herself harder than she should sometimes. It could be exploited pretty easily but she’s usually busy beating herself up about it without help.

03. What would be their favorite physical trait about themselves?

After she started gaining weight she felt so much better about herself. Her face started filling out and she got soft around the edges after she and Atrax left and began to build their base. Once she started to see and feel that softness she was like “Shit! I’m hot!” and she loves herself and her body.

04. What are their favorite traits about their lover? (one psychological and one physical) 

I would say [SPOILERS] but I’ve already talked about shipping her with...you know.... B^)

05. Are they sexually confident or more of the shy type?

She’s normally confident, but as soon as she is romantically interested in someone she completely falls apart. Massive dork energy. 06. Do they have any hobbies that their lover finds unusual, odd, or otherwise annoying?

She has a tendency to push herself too hard physically when training. She still holds a lot of fear because of her upbringing and refuses to stop pushing herself to be stronger.

07. Is there a catchphrase or sound that they tend to make a lot (likely without being aware of it)?

She “Meep!”

08. What is, perhaps, their biggest flaw? Are they aware of this or oblivious to it?

She is still a little naïve because she didn’t get exposed to lessons that would teach her certain things. She has her heart in the right place but gets into messes because of it sometimes.

09. Do they have a favorite season? What about a favorite holiday?

She prefers warm weather. I need...to make some holidays....

10. Is your character more feminine or masculine?

Feminine AF

11. What is something that would make your character fly into a rage?

Hurt someone she loves.

12. Is there some particular talent, skill, or attribute that they simply could not give up?

Flying. She is a great pilot.

13. What are your character’s sleeping habits? Heavy or light sleeper? Blanket stealer? One that always rolls onto the floor? Pushes their lover onto the floor? Sleep talker or walker?

Heavy sleeper with frequent nightmares. Even they’re both grown adults, if she’s having a particularly bad time sleeping she can sleep with Atrax. They have a strong, protective familial relationship.

14. Do they live alone or with family? How do they feel about their family/roommates?

With found family. She and Atrax are very close. Although Ruin antagonizes her constantly, and she him, they rely on each other. Rack is her copilot and wouldn’t trade him for a world.

15. Is there a certain person in this world that they cannot stand? The very mention of this person’s name makes them tremble with anger or fear.

[REDACTED] 16. Is your character the athletic type or more of a couch potato? What are some sports/games that they like?

She’s very athletic and can kick ass.

17. Does your character have dreams of getting married and/or having children?

She doesn’t think children are for her. She doesn’t live a lifestyle congruent with child raising. She’d love to have a wife one day, though.

18. What kind of home would they want to live in? Where would they place this abode?

She wants to find somewhere planetside for herself and Atrax. Somewhere with lots of gardening space, long rolling hills, no Hutts, and neighbors that don’t ask questions.

19. Would your character be the kind to get into fights? (physical or verbal) Would they be a good fighter or cave in rather easily?

She isn’t out looking for a fight, but she’s very capable and can take a hit. Physically, she has probably the highest pain tolerance of anyone in the crew except for Atrax.

20. Does your character like animals? What are some of their favorite animals? Would they want pets? What about mythological creatures?

I don’t know what the star wars equivalent of a horse girl is but that’s Fliis. She loves animals so much. She wants to pet every tooka in the universe. Twice. 21. What is one of your character’s biggest fears? How would they react when dealing with this fear?

Failure. Freaking the fuuuuuuck out.

22. What kind of tattoos, piercings, birthmarks, freckles, and other such unique physical features do they have?

She has natural striping on her lekku, arms, and legs, plus a shitton of freckles. I head canon that because Twi’leks live in cave systems on Ryloth they’re super susceptible to getting freckles because they don’t spend a lot of time under a sun and get most of their vitamin D from mushrooms instead of synthesizing it themselves.

23. What is your character like when it comes to school? What subjects are they good/bad at? Do they get in trouble a lot or are well behaved?

She didn’t go to a school.

24. In their own words, how would your character describe what their lover is like?

sldfjslkfKHASDFLSKDFJDSKFJLSAFllksdflkvnkasdlffjkldsfalskdfLFJkdflsjlkfjiejwiofjc

25. Is there something traumatic from your character’s past that greatly affects them even to this day?

Yes.

26. What is their lover like sexually? How do they feel about their lover’s quirks, needs, etc?

//u//

27. If your character was going to get arrested, what would be the most likely reason for it?

Theft, possession of a [redacted], tax evasion......

28. If your character became a celebrity, what would they be famous for?

Being an actual literal ray of starshine.

29. What is one of the most courageous things your character has ever done for a loved one?

Escape from a Hutt.

30. When it comes to the arts (music, film, theater, etc), what does your character like?

She loves listening to trashy space pop music and watching shows on the holonet. She likes to keep it light and fun because life before was always so sad. She doesn't like to take things too seriously. 31. Would your character be the kind capable of killing? Would they enjoy killing or only use it when necessary or, perhaps, refuse to kill no matter what?

She’s very capable of it, but only when necessary.

32. If your character’s lover offered to take them out on a dream date, what would they want to do?

A long day under an open sky in tall grass. Pack a picnic, visit a new world, not have any responsibilities and just be in some nature.

33. If your character wanted to be alone, where would they go?

There’s a nebula in wild space that is far from any inhabited world or commonly used hyperspace lane. It’s a forgotten part of the galaxy, and sometimes she’ll go there to look out the viewport. She can’t stay long, though, because it gets overwhelming to see how big and empty it can be.

34. Does your character have favorite foods? (breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, snacks, etc)

Space waffles, roasts, sweet ice, shit dude is there pizza in star wars? There is now. Caf, caf and sweet ice together....just like, every tasty thing ever.

35. Is your character afraid of death? If they got to choose how to die, how would they want to go?

She’s not so much afraid of dying, more of missing out or not getting opportunities. Still, if she had to pick: peacefully in her sleep.

36. Does your character have any medical conditions? Are they serious or minor? Do they affect their day to day life?

She is missing a lek. Almost the whole thing. She has to wear a weighted prosthetic to keep balanced. She has a couple and likes to decorate them.

37. What are some of your character’s pet peeves? What are some things that annoy them or disgust them?

She doesn’t like to be told what to do and has a problem with authority.

38. What kind of weather does your character like? Cloudy skies, rainy days, sunshine, etc?

SUNSHINE! She likes the warmth, the free breeze, swimsuit season!

39. When people look at your character, is there some assumption they might make about them just by appearance? Is that assumption correct?

She’s a short, fat Twi’lek woman. Literally the whole universe assumes she’s weak, subservient, and incapable of holding her own in a fight and they are all deadass wrong.

40. Does your OC have any guilty pleasures they enjoy? Hobbies, past times, music, etc that they wouldn’t want known by others?

”Guilty pleasures? I like what I like. Judge me, I’m INVINCIBLE.” 41. Does your character’s family affect your character in any way?

Biological, no. Atrax? Heavily.

42. Is there anything in your character’s past that they regret, haunts them, or they wish they could change?

A different upbringing would be nice, but it’s hard to imagine.

43. Does your character have a switch that changes aspects of their personality whether they are around friends, family, etc. Is there someone who gets to see their true self?

As she tries to become a smuggler--well, a better smuggler--she tries out a ton of personas to fall into while she works.

44. Is there a particular event that would emotionally devastate your character?

Losing Atrax would be beyond devastating.

45. Is your character the kind to hide their true emotions or do they wear their heart on their sleeve?

She wears it on her sleeve at home.

46. What is some random affectionate thing that your character always does to their lover?

She’s very physically affectionate. Massages, hand holding, stroking back/lekku/arms/etc.

47. Is your character outgoing? Would they be the leader of the friend group, or the quiet one that gets dragged along?

She’s not the leader of the crew, but she is outgoing. She’s not a “follower” but Atrax is very much In Charge.

48. Is there anything in particular that would ignite your character’s jealousy? Or does your character not get envious?

Having natural talent in something she can’t do. Which is hard for a non-force sensitive living with at least one force user.

49. What is something that your character has nightmares about? Are these frequent? Do they heavily affect your character’s mood?

Her past, and people she cares about getting hurt. There’s a lot of “what-if” scenario dreams and she ends up having pretty horrible nightmares. She’s pretty well used to it and functions in the daytime alright most of the time, unless it’s a particularly bad one.

50. If your character confessed love to their crush, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc, what would they say?

So much awkward stammering and word-circling until she gets flustered. 

[peach-bottom]

Peach Bottom - Prologue

-ch1->

It was the second home she had lost.

That was the first thought Tye had, stretched out on the highway, her blood sinking down into the porous, cracked up tarmac. The second was that there were more homes than those two, and here she was again, too late in recognizing it. Another was being lost as she bled.

Heat was a slow river over the road. She could feel the ground cracking underneath, unable to contain the green, the green and the blue, every shade of human grey susceptible to the raw power of green and blue. 

And red. Her red. She should be thankful that somewhere, she would still be part of it, even as the part of her that could appreciate that all ended, slipped down into the earth. She was watering the future with her blood, her blood. 

She was going to stay here, somehow, and that was alright. Oh, that was more than alright. 

Green and gold up above. She could hear birds behind the sound of fighting, the sound of screaming, then silence, then a jumble of sound - words, but they didn’t-

If there was one thing Tye’d learned by living in the flooded remains of old Philly, it was always that the swamp rose first. Pavement broke under the force of vegetation. Human roads and houses were flimsy to face it. And in that moment, Tye didn’t mind. She could feel nature hatching underneath her, cracking that road, ready to take it all back, and that was fine, fine, fine. It was all already lost, anyway. Lost, like Peach Bottom.

Tye never knew how to explain Peach Bottom to people.

“Peach Bottom?”

“Yeah! That’s my hometown,” and this, right here at the beginning, was where she normally lost them. They’d shoot her an amused, incredulous look that said exactly what they thought of that, a town called ‘Peach Bottom,’ and it only got worse from there.

 “So many fireflies,” she’d say, hickish twang getting that much twangier with the subject close at hand, “all summer’d be hazy with them, night almost bright as day, So many they were pests - sometimes Ma’d wake up howling she couldn’t sleep with the things sparking up in the ceiling like that.”

And

“Half our food came from the back garden, and a quarter from the wood. Only thing we bought in-store was spices and flour and shit like that. My dad baked bread in this brick oven he and Ma’d built with the help of some neighbors, and we had these four little ducks and two goats - we’d trade their eggs and milk for our neighbor’s apples, and sometimes meat whenever someone was slaughtering a pig or something. Mushrooms, acorns, walnuts, venison - that’s deer - all these came from the wood.” 

And

“The stars looked like spilled milk,” this was her favorite, “So bright! So bright, all the freckles were, but beyond those, space was all so thick you could see this creamy haze right down the middle, where the milky way stretched. Suns and planets - bright white mist, from horizon to horizon.”

This last one she wasn’t even sure about. It was something she’d seen on TV for sure - that away from cities, away from the pillars of electric brightness, the sky seemed less like lonely, hazy sparks and more like one big spill of brilliance. But it couldn’t really be true, because logically she knew that by 2031, the year of her birth, at least where Peach Bottom, PA was, light was everywhere. It didn’t matter that cities were this distant, crystaline dream where it never got dark - Philadelphia’s poison had leaked into the heavens on one side and Harrisburg’s on the other, and even so far away from both these places the stars must’ve been muddied, at least. The milky way was only visible in places like Antarctica, where folks didn’t even try to cut the dark.

This was the nature of grief-infected memory, though. When she looked back, she saw a sky like gleaming, glittering milk. Like the way she’d imagined unicorn blood, or faerie blood, or any other huge magical dead thing - the sky was the carnage of something bigger and more magical, and she remembered it that way. Same way she remembered bartering and trading with neighbors for goods, collecting mushrooms and nuts, but didn’t quite remember the desperation of her and her brothers picking through the rotting fall woods for those moldy nuts because winter was coming and starvation was a real possibility. Keeping her gender identity a secret out of a cold, hard fear of ridicule, and the shit she and Zenia had faced when they started dating - a double whammy, her being a Black Christian and Zenia a white Jew, their togetherness not nearly heterosexual enough even on top of its basic un-holyness. She remembered fireflies, but not the other pests, really. The beetles getting into the tomatoes, her mother sobbing in the garden, hands cracked open with the effort of growing a harvest that had been demolished in under a week. The corn blight: withered, rotten little kernels, but they’d eaten them anyway. The winter they’d had to kill the goats, which had both hand names, rather than starve. Her only sister, still a wee, small thing when she’d died of lyme disease, a circle bruise blooming on her skin like a target before she was struck down. 

She’d wanted to leave when she lived there, is the weird thing, the strange thing, the selfish thing. The ignorant thing. She hadn’t known she’d take herself with her.

“Everyone knew one another,” Tye’d say, and it was true. It was true in the city too, but Tye wasn’t exactly the most well-liked in Mt. Danu, so she didn’t mention that, along with a few other things. It wasn’t that she forgot that some people hated each other, that family feuds and racist neighbors were forces real and dangerous as scraper police and warring gangs. The memories were just kinder - Tye afforded her childhood the same kind of hazy softness many bereaved people grant dead things. Because it was dead.

“If it was so fine,” some city folks would say with their fast-speaking, different tongues, an open, hostile kind of amusement always hovering behind any questions anyone ever (finally, finally) asked her about her hometown, ‘why are you here? Why not live there?”

“It was destroyed in the war,” she’d always say. This was always accepted without question. So many things had been destroyed in the war. Mt. Danu itself had suffered at the foot of one of the government towers, which had been bombed early. And since no city funding every seemed to go towards the ground level except in the form of policing, the wreckage was all still there in the market - an area that had been a traffic circle in the age of gasoline, and was now crowded with ramshackle stands and even some walled and covered stores made from recycled materials - the shells of old trucks, sheets of metal and wood, and even one large center produce tent partially constructed from some of that iron and concrete rubble - the rest of it now a kind of jungle-gym for the children, who didn’t remember the day it had gotten there.

It did not seem too out there to assume Peach Bottom was part of the body count, because the body count seemed too innumerably large. Her town was weak, too - small. Far away. Not like the grounder neighborhoods of the city, which all seemed savvier, brighter, sharper (especially to the Philadelphians) than the fragile bodunk village they must imagine when she said ‘Peach Bottom.’ Like they were a knife, and Peach Bottom was a gummy toddler spoon.

It was kind of a lie, though, to say her town was ‘destroyed.’ One of the only lies Tye was capable of telling without shaking and dropping her eyes - because it was also true. It was true, even if it wasn’t true in the way the city folk who half-listened to her fiercely nostalgic ramblings believed it was. She knew when she said that, they imagined the kind of all-encompassing wreckage they’d known from the war. They pictured all those thin-walled cottages flattened, the screened-in porches caved in, the river flooded up over the streets and the town center - just a bar, a drugstore, the station market, two churches - blown away, or abandoned and then raided, or something, something with a precise end, something that was decidedly dead instead of the empty undeath that had actually taken Tye’s town.

The children of Peach Bottom, Pennsylvania had been reaped in increments. First, at the start, the volunteers.

As with many poor, rural towns, there was no shortage of beguiling patriotism for a country that hadn’t ever really done shit for them. Kids fresh out of high school and some even younger had signed up at the recruitment station that had been set up just outside the school gym. They’d been given crisp, clean uniforms and had been photographed with younger siblings, babies drooping in their arms, parents with heads dropped on their barely-grown child’s shoulders, nervous but proud expressions sturdy on their faces. Flags went up all over town, fights in the bar became about larger politics that until recently hadn’t mattered out in the sticks, far away from it all. Kids were shipped away. And none of them - none of those few in that first purge ever, ever came back.

Tye had been in middle school herself during that first burst of patriotic sacrifice. And then she’d been in high school, and then, by the time the draft was in effect, she’d been old enough to go, so she’d gone, because there was nothing else, because in the wake of so many dead children the town just had to believe there was cause, because to not fight was to betray those ghosts, her older brother, her brother’s girlfriend, her own ex-girlfriend, neighbors and cousins - all sacrificed, and in those days it was unbearable to know it was for nothing, empty loss omnipresent, all of them left over still reeling, still in shock, still to some degree not believing, because bodies were never shipped home, no fuel was needed for the living forces. Because of them, and also just because she’d been too scared to run, she’d gone with the rest of her class when the draft called them, barely a week after graduation. 

And then, there had been the war. A horror orchestrated by those who never suffered for it, suffered only by the martyred masses. Poor folks like her who hadn’t been able to get out of the draft.

Tye had gone home once, after the war, back when Dom was still alive and she was pregnant and she knew her parents were dead but she’d hoped, just hoped, that maybe one of her brothers or her auntie Kaye or someone had kept their little trailer by the river whole and safe. She hadn’t even glorified her childhood yet, thinking it was still alive in some way, but coming from war, anything else had seemed almost painfully soft. Her and Dom had come home damaged, she knew it, felt the break somewhere deep in her soul, and struggling to live somewhere safe, familiar, and away from strangers had seemed infinitely better than struggling to live somewhere unfamiliar and surrounded by strangers. It was the best they could think to do.

Peach Bottom had been silent.

The streets, normally bursting with people on Sunday morning, folks coming home from church or stopping by the market or splurging on a big breakfast at the bar - none of those familiar sights or sounds. Roads like bare bones bleaching themselves dry in the sun, the sound of her breathing too loud. Dim lights on in the bar, but only a few huddled figures inside, no food smells, no church bells, nothing but the squinting stares of the folks on porches, shotguns at their side, faces full of wrinkles and grey hairs and this open, festering wound, a vacancy so complete it seemed to suck at the edge of her soul. She saw absolutely no one her age or younger.

The trailer had been locked, abandoned, and then later, by the looks of the windows - robbed. The river had been shockingly close - much closer than she remembered it, the whole house tilting slightly towards it, bookshelves and cabinets scooted all into the tilt and anything that could be of value to someone who didn’t care taken, which hadn’t been much. The old family laptop was gone. The TV. The few pieces of jewelry her mother hadn’t sold during hard times. 

Tye had taken her brother’s sketchbook, her dad’s harmonica, and her favorite cup, a tin mug with painted sunflowers. She left the door gaping behind her, a frantic horror rising hard and terrible in her throat, and then her and Dom had gotten the fuck out of there, taken the first train, and his nervous eyes had kept on flicking back to her, his great, thick arms around her, hands touching her shoulders, her neck, trying to soothe whatever he saw in her face without effect. The silence caught in her soul and stayed, grief bleeding her like nothing she’d ever felt, and no matter how far she got it still seemed stretched thin after that. A thread connecting her eternally to Peach Bottom, to her home, as far, far away from her, it continued to slowly die.

“It was never quiet. Not like here, though - no traffic. Crickets, cicadas - Oh! You’ve never heard cicadas. No lie - they scream. It’s a mating call, but it sounds like screaming. HEY SWEET THIIIIING,’ Tye’d bellowed once at a smaller, babier Xena in winter, blankets hung over all the windows and a space heater between them, soft and orange, a gentle glow on her chubby face. Xena’s eyes wide and shining, wondered rapture like she was hearing about dragons or faeries or something else that couldn’t exist.

She was the only one who listened to Tye go on about this anymore without accusing her of bragging, like being from Peach Bottom meant anything remotely better than being from the Mt. Danu Ghetto. Bright, beautiful, best-thing-in-the-world Xena, her father dead and her sight going and neither of those things would’ve ever happened just twenty feet up and to the left, in the close, beautifully contained community worlds of the scrapers, where the rich lived. Diabetes was a minor inconvenience up there, and here on the ground, in the half-flooded remains of the lower city where her and Dom had eventually settled after those lost post-war months - here in the neighborhood of Mt. Danu it meant her husband died and her daughter was going blind, her daughter was going blind, her daughter was going blind.

She imitated cicadas as best she could, that screeching trill, lunged forward and tickled Xena as she did, and Xena screeched too, hysterical with giggles, imagining a world she’d never known, her vision already too blurry to see the circles under Tye’s eyes, the flat pallor, the exhaustion so complete on her face.

That was right before she got the job at AedosDynamic. She was still doing the preliminary work, then - making money any way, every way, hoarding it, saving for her first initial payment to the woman in the Microsoft tower, who’d agreed to let Tye use her address while applying for jobs for a ‘small’ price, and then later, as a surprise, for an additional monthly fee. 

Officially, you needed a job inside a tower in order to be approved to move into any given tower. Unofficially, you needed to live in a tower to get a job in the towers. 

Their little row home in Mt. Danu had been home enough, though. She could only ever see that looking back - her, asleep with her head on Xena’s leg as Xena finished her homework wrapped in two layers of sweaters, face an inch away from the paper, her little lantern flickering - no, they would have to buy batteries soon, oh no - humming a focused little song, Xena’s dog Goober snoring softly in her bed, paws twitching.

Through the only little window in their home, she’d been able to see the bright, sterile lights of the AedosDynamic Tower rising into the sky, stretching from one side to the other, pale electricity spilled across an empty night.

Lost. All lost.

Oh, Xena.

- ch1->

[the-ocfeedback-gal-blog]

Yat-Sen Tay Review

TW: Anxiety, depression, eating disorder, mention of self-harm.

The-OCfeedback-Gal’s notes will be italicized.

Physical Description: Around 1.80 m (5'11") and 62 kg (136 lbs). Slightly dark, warm skin. Slim face with high cheekbones. Freckles on his nose and cheeks. He usually has a small stubble. A beauty mark on his right cheek. Full, arched lips. Very upturned, double-lid, hooded eyes. Long, dark lashes. Clear, light brown eye colour. Full, straight eyebrows that arched at the end. Hair is usually pretty curly (Type 3b) and it falls into his eyes, but he straightens it and styles it back for work. Hair colour is dark brown, his eyebrows match his hair. Bottom heavy, top slim. Prominent collarbones. Slim neck, shoulders, arms and chest. Thicker thighs, butt and legs. Average feet and hands. He shaves most of his body once a week. He wears glasses, he has two pairs. One pair is big and round, the other is the hipster style frame. He wears the second one to work. Wears a silver ring with a red jewel on his left hand and a silver watch with a red display on his left wrist. He wears a lot of burgundies. His style is usually lazy, button-up shirts with shorts and socks at home. At work, he wears formal sweaters or cardigans with cotton trousers and dress shoes.

I have a clear idea in my mind from this description.

Name: Yat-Sen (given name) Tay (surname) 

Flows off the tongue pretty well.

Species/Race: He’s a black Asian from Singapore!

This is interesting, since I know that many people who grow up in Asian countries but don’t look 100% native tend to have a very hard time feeling like an outsider and never being accepted by their own people. Does he ever have problems like this?

Age: 26. His birthday is 8th of September 1991, so he is a Virgo and Gold Goat. 

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Questionable, but probably aromantic asexual.

Friends: He has a few colleagues he gets along with and some high school buddies he gets together with from time to time, but he usually prefers not to meddle with other people. He does get acquainted with a lot of people throughout the story and even gets deeply involved with a few, but that’s later on.

Family: He has a good bond with his older sister after having patched things up with her from when he was still a teen. His dad was never really a person he could close to, a typical businessman. His mother is still bitter about the past, so he doesn’t want to make the effort to talk it out anymore since it always ends up in a fight and a lot of stress for everyone. He was close with his grandmother, but she died when he was thirteen. She would usually resolve all the quarrels between him, his mother and his sister. Pets: He finds a Fennec fox at a river in the beginning of the story. When he was little (5 years old till 13 years old) he would take care of the hedgehogs in his grandma’s garden.

A fennec is highly unusual, as they are from Africa, and the Sahara no less. That being said, they aren’t endangered so I could see one somehow getting shipped in as part of the exotic pets trade and escaping a pet store or something similar. They are very cute and likely to be sold as pets.

Hobbies: He used to like reading and writing. After he moved out he also started to enjoy cooking for himself. He’s very obsessed about his weight, so he works out a lot by jogging in the park that’s nearby his apartment and going for a swim in the pool where he is signed up at.

Sounds good in theory, but is can be hard to avoid crowds/touching people during peak times of the year at swimming pools. Does going to the pool and being in front of people in nothing but swimwear make him nervous?

Likes: Sleeping and eating healthy food. The tired and burning feeling he gets after a good work out. Water, drinking or swimming. Thunderstorms at night. Warm, scented baths. The flowers he takes care of at the park. The smell of books. Soft clothes. Doing household chores.

Dislikes: Lots of noise. Small talk. Nosy people. Crowds. Physical contact, especially from strangers. Messy rooms. Grease. Being wrong. Asking for help and needing it in general.

He seems like a very sensory focused person, which is pretty cool.

Personality: Yat-sen is a soft-spoken introvert, who is violent minded. He hates conflict and strong emotions, so he avoids situations that could cause either of them. He tends to pent up his frustrations and when he needs to vent he goes for an extra long jog or He always has been someone who is heavily dependent on routine and planning, so he makes a to-do list every evening for the next day. He likes being knowledgeable about everything, so he leaves time open every day to do research about something he found interesting that day.

He struggles a lot with his weight, because he used to be pretty overweight when he was younger and that caused a lot of very unpleasant situations. He also struggles with depression since a couple of years, it was never a suicidal sort of depression though. He can’t find enjoyment in his hobbies and even when he tried switching up things a lot, nothing seemed to excite him. He gave up on trying to find a new hobby and he just fell back into his old rhythm, he does most things on auto-pilot now.

He works well under pressure, but after he is released from it, he feels very anxious and stressed, so he also tries to avoid pressure as much as possible. He has a fondness for small animals since they calm him down. He spaces out a lot when he is doing something that does not require his 100% attention, so he takes long to finish things, also because he’s a die-hard perfectionist. He is a coward that avoids everything he doesn’t like instead of overcoming it. He gives up on people and things quickly if things don’t work out perfectly off the bat.

A couple things that seem to conflict. Why would someone who works well under pressure and even becomes upset when not under pressure avoid pressure? Most perfectionists and workaholics I know actively seek out tasks and problems to keep their mind busy. Giving up easily also doesn’t seem to fit into the perfectionist mindset. If anything perfectionists tend to put too much effort into things.

He is very good at building and keeping habits, but they’re hard to get rid off. He easily gets addicted to things, they don’t always have to be bad things, but he knows he’s susceptible so he is cautious of trying new things he doesn’t understand completely.

If he’s good at building habits, which a perfectionist probably would be, why is he bad at putting effort into things that aren’t inherently perfect? It seems weird that he’s willing to put in so much effort into himself but not really anything else if he is labeled as a perfectionist. Maybe self conscious or hard on himself would be a better term for him.

History: He used to be a very fat kid, so he was shamed and shunned a lot by his family and classmates. He developed an inferiority complex and an eating disorder which never really went away. He grew up in Singapore for most of his life where he learned English and Mandarin. Mandarin was the main language used in his neighborhood, but since almost everything was taught in English at school in Singapore he grew up Bilingual. He was an overachiever at school and genuinely enjoyed studying, so he always got good grades. He was really interested in literature, however, so he told his mother he wasn’t planning on becoming any sort of doctor, lawyer or whatever she wanted him to be. He already had anxiety problems at a young age so he didn’t want to be involved in such high-pressure jobs either way. He said he wanted to be a literature collector and own a bookstore, so he was going to earn an English and business degree.

Specifically an English degree or a literature degree? Since this takes place in Singapore I’m not very sure.

This was one of the many disputes between him and his mother besides his weight. He also tended to have some interests that his mother saw as too feminine, so she accused him of being gay and tried to ‘fix’ him. They also fought a lot because he was brought up as Taoist, but he accused his mother of being a fake believer and such since she was always so hateful and judgmental according to him. His grandmother from his mother’s side lived very close so he used to go there all the time to relax and hear some of his grandmother’s stories. She also educated him about Taoism and helped him read the Tao Te Ching, so he was very fond of her and he loved her very much. She gave him all the love he was missing at home. He fought with his sister mostly about stupid things, like who ate the last cookie and such, but sometimes the remarks would be very nasty. On both sides.

Taoism is a very interesting religion and learning directly from his grandmother would help explain his vastly different opinion on things from his mother, who sounds like she might be more influenced by the general opinion in Singapore on things like Homosexuality and weight. The fact that you admit that Yat-Sen was not innocent in fighting with his sister is good, as sibling fights are rarely one sided.

When Yat-sen was sixteen he lied to his sister An about seeing her at the time boyfriend cheating on her to get back at her for something, but he didn’t know they were just about to get engaged (his sister was 21 at the time) and she got into a big fight with her boyfriend which resulted in a break-up. When Yat-sen finally came clean about it, she wouldn’t talk to him at all and did not keep contact with him after she moved out two years later. Only after three more years when Yat-sen sincerely apologized and they talked it out could she forgive him. Mostly because it turned out the ex-boyfriend was only after her because of their father’s money because he was deeply in debt from gambling. He got thrown in prison for stealing money from seniors by pretending to help them carry their groceries to their home and then taking their savings and running off.

You mentioned earlier that he and his sister get along very well now and that there seems to be no hard feelings between the siblings, which I find hard to believe. Even if Yat-Sen, with all his heart, felt remorse for his actions and even if the boyfriend turned out to be a bad person, I know that if I had been the sister, I would not have fully forgiven him. It’s a strong mark of character to potentially ruin two people’s lives as an act of revenge and the fact that all is forgiven because the boyfriend wasn’t very nice after all feels rather cheap, like there was no negative effect and Yat-Sen is almost rewarded for doing something that is honestly a horrible thing to do. Like, the sister can forgive him if she chooses, but to have absolutely no hard feeling about it at all is quite strange. 

“…forgiveness does not mean you become best friends with the person who wronged you. Forgiveness is not saying what happened was ok. Forgiveness is not saying you accept the person who wronged you. Instead, forgiveness is choosing to accept what happened as it happened rather than what could or should have happened. Forgiveness can mean that you let go. Forgiveness can mean you love from a distance. Forgiveness can mean you step into your present rather than anchoring in the past.” -Psychology Today, The Psychology of Forgiveness, Sept. 16, 2014

Yat-sen’s dad was almost never home because he usually worked overseas and traveled a lot as a representative in a big firm in Singapore. When he was home, however, the talk was mostly small talk and very basic questions, like “How is school?” and “So are there any girls you like?”. Yat-sen thought his father didn’t even try to make an effort to get to know him because he kept asking the same questions, even over the phone when he would call his mother.

The truth was that his father did try to get to know him, but he had nothing to start with since he had become so estranged from his family over time. He did not know what to ask and he did not want to make Yat-sen uncomfortable, so he quickly stopped after a few minutes of talking since it was very obvious Yat-sen did not like it. He also did not know of the tension at home, which escalated after grandmother died.

After the death of his grandmother, Yat-sen fell into a cycle of anxiety and self-harm by starvation and things at school become worse. By age sixteen he had lost so much weight he was clinically underweight, but his mother was happy to finally not have to be ashamed for her fat son. When he finally turned 18 he left for college and decided to live on campus to escape the toxic situation at home. He went to study Marketing and Business Development. Marketing took 4 years for a Bachelors degree and Business Development 3 years, so he was 25 years old when he finished.

During his studies he took on various part-time jobs to start to pay for his own apartment and bills, so he wasn’t so dependent on his parents. After his studies, he kept his job at one of the bigger libraries that are also a part of a bookstore a few blocks further, for experience and he got upgraded to a full-time employee. Now he shifts between the library and the store during the week, but he doesn’t mind that too much.

Overall a very well thought out backstory and personality. You clearly put a lot of thought into both his positive and negative traits, which is very good! I can see him being a solid character to build a story around. The mother seems a bit one dimensional, but if we are seeing this from the son’s perspective that’s not unusual.

Any Extras?(For example: A Harry Potter OC might talk about their wand or a Naruto OC might talk about their jutsu): Don’t think so, if you have any questions, you can ask away!

Most of any questions I might have I typed out while reading the character sheet.

Final Notes: I’m so sorry this is so long and that the way of describing is so all over the place. I didn’t know if I should stick to a telegram-style of writing, in the end, it got scrapped, haha.

It’s all good, as long as it is somewhat easy on the eyes for reading I can handle it.

I have a bit of an idea on what he probably looks like based off of the description you gave but just to be sure when you get some pictures of him feel free to send them in if you want the “First three OCs submitted get free art” offer. Sorry I didn’t have more to say, without the context of a fandom I have to just go off of what I can gather from the character sheet without knowing anything about the world or surrounding characters, so I hope you’re happy with the critique.

[catty-words]

this beast that you’re after: part 2

summary: Annie and Jeff share a moment in the morning. Set after this post-G.I. Jeff fic. word count: 1,220 author’s note:  This is dedicated to @bethanyactually for being my biggest cheerleader and an awesome friend. She inspired this follow-up by leaving a million comments on the G.I. Jeff fix-it. I also owe her a huge thanks for beta-ing this even though she's under the weather. This little one-shot will serve as a nice segue between its predecessor and the Basic Sandwich replacement caper I'm in the middle of writing. *insert devious cackle here*

[ao3]

The sun is already streaming bright and insistent into Jeff’s room by the time he wakes the next morning. He sighs and rolls onto his back, flexing his toes and feeling the stretch radiate up through his legs.

As he lounges, in no rush to get out of bed, Jeff tries to hang onto the doziness in his brain, to keep it from clearing. He can’t remember the last time he’d felt this relaxed…probably because he can’t remember the last time he’d slept soundly through the night.

After a moment, the familiar ping of his coffeemaker alerting him to a freshly brewed pot sounds throughout his apartment, snatching away his serenity. The events of the previous week come back to him in a distressed, throbbing heartbeat.

Jeff throws his arm over his eyes and bites down on his lower lip, trying his hardest to stamp down the sudden urge to cry.

Thankfully, a voice cuts through his distress.

“But I’ll kneel down, wait for now,” they sing. “And I’ll kneel down, know my ground.”

Remembering that he asked Annie to stay, Jeff feels a tug in his chest and slides out from under his comforter. After pulling on an undershirt, he pads out of his room.

Annie’s in his kitchen, shimmying in front of his stove.

“And I will wait, I will wait for you,” she continues, getting louder and more enthusiastic. “I will wait, I will wait for you.”

Jeff smiles in spite of himself. Annie’s in his kitchen, shimmying in front of the stove and singing hits off the American Top 40 countdown.

“Someone’s in a good mood,” he says as he slides onto one of the barstools at the counter.

She jumps nearly a foot in the air and whips around to face him. “Jeff! You shouldn’t sneak up on people like that.”

“Um, this is my apartment,” he points out.

She turns back to whatever she’s got cooking on the stovetop, shaking her head. “I just mean you could have coughed or cleared your throat or something.”

“Ah yes, next time I’ll try to be more considerate of how high-strung you are.”

He can pretty much hear her rolling her eyes. “That’s all I ask.”

They lapse into comfortable silence, and his smile only widens as he drinks her in. She’s still wearing the t-shirt he lent her to sleep in, though she’s changed out of his shorts and back into the worn jeans she’d been in when she picked him up from the hospital. The shirt is way too large, the neck so stretched out that it’s starting to slip off her right shoulder. There’s a smattering of dark freckles there that makes Jeff gulp.

He forces himself to look away.

“Here,” Annie says, setting a mug of coffee and a heaping plate of scrambled eggs with spinach and cherry tomatoes in front of him. “I figured you’d be hungry for something that doesn’t taste like cardboard.”

He’s about to protest that this is way too much for one person when the smell hits his nostrils. His stomach growls loudly in response.

Annie grins, clearly pleased with herself for anticipating his needs.

He resists the urge to fling some egg in her face and instead grumbles a begrudging, “Thank you,” before digging in.

Jeff tries to ignore how closely she’s watching him as she sips from a steaming mug of coffee, but after several mouthfuls he starts to get self-conscious.

“Do I have egg on my face? Unruly bedhead?” he asks.

“Huh?”

“You’re not exactly being subtle with all that staring,” he says.

“Oh, sorry.”

When she doesn’t elaborate, he sets down the fork and squints at her. “Seriously. What is it?”

Her eyes widen and she takes a too-big gulp of the hot coffee.

“Mhffn,” she mumbles incoherently, gesticulating with her empty hand.

“Annie,” Jeff says sternly.

She swallows hard and then forces a laugh. “You know, now that you mention it, your hair does look pretty ridiculous. You should probably start your morning hair care routine as soon as possible. I’ll take care of the clean up in here!”

His hand reflexively flies to his hair, but he refuses to be diverted that easily. “First of all, you’re the one who made the mess, so of course you’re going to be the one cleaning it up.”

“I was doing you a favor!” she says, speaking over him.

Jeff ignores that. “Secondly, I’m going to tell everyone in the group that you snore if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on.”

“Troy and Abed live with me,” Annie says dismissively. “They’d know that wasn’t true.”

“Troy and Abed are extremely susceptible to persuasion,” he volleys back.

She purses her lips and drops her gaze to the coffee in her mug. “You’re not gonna like it.”

Jeff rolls his eyes. “I’d kinda already worked that out.”

“I was just…I don’t know! Checking.”

“Checking?” he asks.

“For signs. You know?” A sheepish blush is creeping into her cheeks. “I was checking to see if I could tell how you’re feeling.”

“Oh,” he says, understanding. “Gotcha.”

The following silence is thick and tense.

“Is this what it’s going to be like from now on?” he asks. “All my friends playing lookout, constantly waiting for me to lose it?”

“Jeff, of course not,” Annie says, reaching out and covering his hand, which has curled into a fist on the counter. “But things are going to be a little different for a while. No one wants a repeat scare.”

He closes his eyes and swallows hard over the lump in his throat. “How am I gonna face them? After the hospital, how am I gonna be able to look them in the eyes?”

“The same way you always have,” she says, her voice gentle. “Knowing that their total disregard for your personal space comes from the fact that they care about you.”

That gets him to laugh.

“You’re not alone, remember? If it ever gets to be too much, I can snag their undivided attention in an instant.”

“Oh yeah?” he says, opening his eyes. She's gazing at him, her eyes achingly kind. “How’re you going to do that?”

She grins mischievously. “I have my ways.”

He nods, unclenching his fist so he can give her hand a grateful squeeze. “I don’t doubt that.”

They’re quiet for a moment. Then Annie gently extracts her hand from his and turns toward the stove. “I should get the pan soaking.”

“Wait,” he says. She looks back at him, cocking a curious eyebrow. “These eggs aren’t gonna eat themselves.”

She gives him a funny look. “I know. That’s where you come in.”

“Share with me?”

With an amused smile, she retrieves a second fork from his utensil drawer. “Well, if you insist.”

“Hey, Annie,” he says after a second, his voice hushed.

“Yes, Jeff?”

“You don’t have to guess at how I’m feeling next time. You could just ask.”

A few emotions play across her face—surprise and hope and something Jeff can’t put a name to—before she sucks her lower lip into her mouth and nods, looking almost shy.

“Okay, yeah. I’ll ask.”

He grins down at the plate of eggs, pushing a tomato along the edge with his fork. He’s overcome with the weirdest certainty that he’d tell her the truth.

[journalmaterialscience-blog]

Review on Gray Track Effects on Potassium Titanyl Phosphate Single Crystals Abstract Potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) is an interesting crystal for many applications in nonlinear optics and electro-optics. Its large optical nonlinearity, damage resistance, wide acceptance angle, low insertion loss and thermally phase-matching properties make KTP crystal suitable for frequency doubling of infrared lasers. In addition, it is chemically inert and mechanically robust which are important in the construction of reliable devices suitable for industrial and medical applications. Though this crystal has enormous functional advantage, the charge defect known as gray tracking reduces its efficiency. This article aims to provide detail concept of gray tracking that mainly involves mechanism that lead to initiation of gray track, by laser and electric field. Discussed the dependency factors like wavelength, threshold, moisture, and repetition rate of laser, dopant addition, polarisation that influence the gray track to signify the effects of gray tracking in KTP and discoursed the measures to control and eliminate the gray tracking. Keywords: Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) Go to Introduction The contemporary trend in industrial and medical fields is to adopt solid state lasers with high average power, this requires technologies of higher harmonics generation with efficiency and stability, the efficiency of nonlinear crystal long-wavelength laser emissions to the visible and ultraviolet spectral ranges has led to a constant increasing use of these crystals. Among them KTP is one of the nonlinear crystal frequently opted for its excellent properties like a large nonlinear optical coefficient, wide acceptance angles, thermally stable phase-matching additionally to its attractive nonlinear optical characteristics, It is also utilized in electro-optic applications such as waveguide modulators and Puckers cells because of its large electro-optic coefficients and low dielectric constants, These high efficiency and stability is sufficient to fulfil the expectancy. However this crystal suffers from an important disadvantage, that is the formation of the colour centre called gray tracking. Gray tracking is a fatigue damage arises due to defect in crystal characterised by a coloured appearance in them which is commonly known as darkening that reduces the non-linear property of crystal through optical power losses(by absorption) that is said to be as chromic damage and so as lowering its performance in applications. Mostly flaws in crystal will decrease the efficiency of their property, here quoted some illustration to showcase effect in crystal due to this damage, Benoˆıt Boulanger [1], experiments show that gray tracking modifies the parametric gain and also many experiments proved that this damage lowers the SHG efficiency and causes astigmatism of the output laser beam and limits the overall lifetime of optical elements, So as if gray tracks once initiated, absorb a significant portion of the propagating beams causing optical power losses and continued operation often leads to catastrophic damage especially in KTP (KTiOPO4) [2,3]. The scope of this paper is concerned with propagating the overall knowledge of gray tracking including their mechanism and effects. To implicate the idea in simple terms let’s say that Ionizing radiation such as laser beam or x-rays is capable to produces electrons and holes that become separately trapped within the lattice of KTP thus forms colour centres. Thus classification is done based on two sources nothing but both the laser and electric-field which is its prime application, by inducing damage susceptibilities. Depend on the source they are named as photo chromic damage and electro chromic damage. This colouration phenomenon generally observed in KTP crystals during the second harmonic generation (SHG). Some possible mechanisms that lead to the formation of these electron-hole pairs during SHG are effects of sum-frequency generation, one-photon absorption and multi-photon absorption. However, the damage susceptibilities of the crystals also depend on the growth technique. Many different hypotheses have been presented to explain this phenomenon, which will be seen in following sessions. Mechanism Involved in Gray Tracking Formation Focus of many investigators is to recover the KTP from gray tracking to produce assured product for industrial use, To do so the core cause of gray track should be known, though various susceptibility is feasible, general believe is that defects that trap photo induced electron and holes is the primary engender, the defect mentioned is trapping sites, Optical absorption and electron paramagnetic resonance [EPR] studies can be opted to identify the trapping sites. Few investigators worked on in it namely Roelofs [4] described four distinct Ti3+ through EPR Spectral study in electrically induced or annealing in a hydrogen atmosphere in flux grown crystal, flowingly Andreev and Asimov found the same effect in X-ray irradiation at room temperature also Andreev [5] demonstrated the same using Laser beam. Likely the application themselves efficient to produce trapping sites. Elimination of these trapping sites considerably increases the gray track damage threshold. One can easily understand the mechanism with the description of X.B. Hua [6] as of the laser irradiated in KTP, some electron–hole pairs will be produced in the perfect lattice. Click here to view Large Image 1 Many of the electrons and holes will immediately recombine to restore the perfect lattice; but, a portion of the electrons and holes will migrate sufficiently far from each other and encounter a stabilizing entity, either a vacancy or an extrinsic impurity. Thus, a few of the electrons and holes will be stabilized at widely separated sites within the crystal and form the point defects (optical absorption centres) that contribute to the formation of a gray track [6]. Primal scholars [1,4,7] suggested that Ti3+ may cause optical damage but this didn’t give any direct relation to the cause of gray tracking, there after Scripsick MP et al.[8] have overcome above statement, by experimentally proving that Fe3+ traps holes and Ti3+ traps electron, Nizamutdinov et al. [9]. Experiments proved existence of EPR spectra Fe3+ in KTP for the first time following him Stenger et al. [10] and Gaite [11] distinguished four spectra of Fe3+ in flux grown KTP, latter studies suggested that Fe3+ occupy Ti(1) and Ti(2) sites depend on crystal and ENDOR(electron-nuclear double resonance) studies by Scrip sick suggested that oxygen vacancies are located adjacent to the Ti3+ centres also (Figures 1 & 2) [8] depict EPR results conformance with all these theory basis they forwarded to trapping sites identification in flux grown crystal and induced gray track through x-ray source where the effect was found at 500nm due to Fe3+ other negligible effect due to Fe2+or Fe4+also seen in (Figure 1) [8]. Click here to view Large Image 2 Click here to view Large Image 3 The gray track induction produced by x-ray source was used for investigation. The gray track didn’t last for more hours, they experienced recovery within 10hrs to the partial stage pre irradiated condition at room temperature, continuous monitoring of optical absorption at 500nm wavelength for 20hrs showed declination, A significant decay of the EPR spectra from the two Ti3+ centres and growth of the isolated Fe3+ centres is seen in (Figure 3) [8]. All these lead to the formulation concept. The optical absorption at 500 nm and the EPR signals from the Ti3+ and Fe3+ centres were monitored over a period of 20h at room temperature [8]. The chemical formulation representation given with respect to the above hypothesis on redistribution of charges is equation (1) Click here to view Large Image 4 There is an excellent correlation, as shown in (Figure 3), between the decay of the optical absorption and the decay of the two Ti3+ centres. Also, the growth of the EPR spectrum of the isolated Fe3+ centres coincides directly with the other decays. From these results, it is concluded that gray tracks are formed in KTP when isolated Fe3+ ions trap holes and Ti4+ ions (with an adjacent oxygen vacancy) trap electrons. But he nowhere addressed about the role of K+ (potassium) centres which is one of the major constituent in KTP crystal though he given chemical formation and decay formula he didn’t mention on the thermal effect and activation energy which is an important parameter while considering the combination and recombination but V. Mürk [12] model of two subsystem overcame previous statement on K+ ions and also given some acceptable reason for formation of these defects. From his experiments he conveyed the two subsystem based on natural KTP crystallographic structure one is the radiation-resistant oxide framework of TiOPO4, and the relatively mobile of the K+ captions located in the framework cavities as the energy needed for creation of a defect in the potassium sub lattice is very less say not greater than 1.4 eV, the local lattice vibration occurs when there is overheating which is much enough for non-radioactive TiO6 octahedral exactions develop a Freckle-defect pair, Ki+- V(K+) ,the micro volume containing Ki+- ion capture electron and form Ti3+ colour centres and holes outside this volume create various oxygen colour centres and thereby gray tracking emerges he also experiments on bleaching process which is of great use from the time of growth of crystal will be seen in detail in session of recovery from gray tracking later. Laser Induced Gray Track Laser is one of the prime application of KTP but this also remain a cause for gray tracking to make it simple the purpose of it’s make itself a inducer of its damage. In accordance with consideration of gray tracking as a multiphase damage there is said to be involvement of simultaneous exposure of multiple waves like, IR and visible rays. People considered gray tracking and its source cause as a mystery until mechanism of photo chromic damage as been explored, because they experienced gray track for variety of rays and situation for instance they observed gray track formation due to second harmonic generation [2,4,13,14] which is neither IR nor Visible Rays, even Blachman R proved it with UV radiation. Studying the effect caused by these sources may lead to some revelation of formation of gray track by laser i.e. in application. Gray tracking induced by a laser is classically studied on the basis of several types of experiments: Visual observation of the darkening. Observation of second-harmonic beam distortion during 1064-nm SHG [3,13]. Optical transmission coefficient measurement by the beam which creates the damage [5] or by a probe beam during laser exposure [3,13,15]. Optical transmission or absorption spectra [2,13,16- 18], Electron spin resonance (ESR) spectra [14,16] measured before and after laser irradiation. From these experimental studies, some properties of the laser-induced gray-tracking have been determined [3,13]: The gray tracking threshold (expressed as the laser peak intensity above which the damage is observed) is a decreasing exponential function of the Q-switch frequency [13] knowing the threshold will render a productive usage, limitation and maintenance of devices. This also help in knowing the concept that a laser beam with a polarization parallel to the polar axis of KTP, i.e., the binary axis creates more damage than a beam polarized orthogonally to the axis [2], [14] this information gives us a knowledge on positioning of Crystal. The time constant is dependent on the intensity of the laser beam as far the level of gray-tracking reaches the asymptotic value [14,15,17,18]. This gives the assumption about the intensity of laser and safe duration of its exposure to the crystal, thereby indicate the lifetime of crystal. So far the revelation of these properties will implicate their careful usage and limitation of device part but elucidating the mechanism of gray track will actually help in précising parameters from growth stage itself making it superefficient and increasing its lifetime in application. Laser beam radiation in KTP produces photo carriers in the volume of the beam. Then, the electrons and holes will drift apart and become trapped separately by the defects in the crystal by following the possible mechanism as mentioned before. The actual application of this crystal is to transmit secondary harmonic energy waves, today third harmonics is also being in existence effectively for use from the incidental fundamental waves, these waves are with adequate peak power intensity for respective applications this beyond certain limit (threshold) seem to cause the gray tracking, detail studies of these is as follows: Dependencies of Gray Tracking For any damage or growth process there are factors which influence them, these should be taken into consideration for successful product and for reduction of blunder, the various condition and dependent factors influencing the gray track is as follows. Wavelength and Threshold Experiments of Boulanger B [19] on KTP regarding the wavelength and intensity peak power and proved the dependency of gray tracking, He tried out with 1064nm, 532nm, 355nm where many focussing only on SHG of 532nm his team worked hardly on proving the influence of 355nm which they considered as a possible THG, went in vain because ultimately they ended up with result that neither 1064nm nor 355nm have no influence on inducing gray tracking in contrast to report of Blachman R [20] and in accordance with report of Loiacono GM [2] but their investigation on intensity peak power gave an important parameter for consideration i.e. the threshold value of intensity peak power 80MW/cm2 above which darkening of crystal start appearing. As a known fact electron excitation from the valence band to the conduction band action is responsible for any kind of reaction occurring say here as harmonic generation, there is need of energy for excitation and transmission Thus there is requirement of constant high power of laser that is also one of the inducing factor of damage that cause astigmatism of SHG efficiency and finally result in catastrophic damage so in below two subtopics dependencies of alternating solutions where discussed. Repetition Rate of Laser The alternative solution for the blame of constant high power that reduce the lifetime of crystal rapidly is providing them in pulse mode, that leads to another considerable factor repetition rate, It seem to decrease the threshold of gray tracking, previously the threshold value was mentioned as 80MW/cm2 which was under weak focussing whereas to the experimental evidence of Fève JP [21] that the gray-tracking peak power threshold strongly decreases when the repetition rate is increased: from 125MW/cm2 at 1kHz to 18MW/cm2 at 6.3kHz, and to a few MW/cm2 for frequencies greater than 10kHz. Therefore the threshold itself depends on frequency and focussing condition. These strong focussed crystal take lot time say more than a year to recover from the gray tracking. Qiuhui Zhang [22] also conducted studies on high repetition rate of laser in KTP and devised some useful model. As mentioned before once gray tracking started it continuously accumulates and ends at catastrophic damage. He devised a model on accumulation of gray tracking once it is started i.e. once colour centres formation initiated with according to the mechanism previously discussed, the bond breaks incessantly and absorption increases, the density of colour centres contribute to gray tracking centres, So there comes the relationship with variation in colour centres which is given by the number of colour centres Δn [23,24]. Click here to view Large Image 5 where D- is a constant of proportionality, F0 -the peak photon flux density of the incident, m- the order of multi-photon absorption, kB -the Boltzmann constant, T- the temperature, U0 -the initial activation energy of damage which is found to be 1-3eV for various materials, γ the material parameters, and σ =σT +σc the stress which includes thermal stress σT= Cα KFmo (C: a constant, a : the thermal expand coefficient, K: the bulk modulus of crystal) and the stress σc = Kncv (nc: the density of colour centres, v: the volume of each ion) induced by lattice expand owing to colour centres. This colour centres accounts primarily to gray tracking not the catastrophic damage, including gray tracking other factors (for e.g., thermal stress) that has been excluded from the equation may also add to the catastrophic damage. Including the above term with the nF- initial colour density (The density of absorption centre can also be estimated by Macula formula [25]), V- the volume of the focus region, is the change of colour centres after an infinite time, r is a constant describing the rate of relaxation, t is the time, It gives the density of gray tracking after each pulse as below Click here to view Large Image 6 After each irradiation there will be summation of density term with change in exponential term alone which is seen after 2nd irradiation, Click here to view Large Image 7 Similarly nth irradiation is given by, Click here to view Large Image 8 f is the repetitive rate of incident pulses, t the lasting time of irradiation. This iteration ends up i.e. the saturation of gray tracking occurs only if 0 U ≥γσ i.e. the stress induced by the expansion of colour centres is lesser than atom binding energy, this can be made as indication for the extent the crystal withstand before the entire damage, Using this one can simulate the gray tracking formation in crystal. Influence of Impurities Next alternative is adding impurities sometimes intentionally in name of do pant to enhance the property of material for instance: Ce improves the KTP transparency, trivalent metal cation are used to decrease the electrical conductivity along the c axis, Nb5+ shifts the second harmonic generation cut-off to shorter wavelengths, and also to reduce the required power and thus improving the threshold of gray tracking. C.Zaldo [26,27] one among major contributors involved in the do pant investigation, explored by incorporating different do pants like Zr, Er, Na, W, Ho, Nd, Nr, and dual composition (Wr:Rh) such different dopants of particular interest was tested UV, and x-ray irradiation but if doped samples does not meet the requirement say like inducing it by photons with energy lower than the KTP band gap [28] they also suffer from damage. He and his team experimented on both doped and undoes KTP and thermally bleached (It is a thermal treatment which involves heating the sample above the room temperature to reproduce the crystal to the state before irradiation) heating the crystal doped samples. They presented following information for us: The presence of impurities will induce two changes: Appearance of a band at about 488nm especially for high concentration of impurity Shift of Optical absorption edges which solely depend on concentration of impurities, they viewed that the shift is caused due to local lattice distribution and stress created by impurities. The growth sectors of 001 of KTP incorporate more impurities comparatively because this axis has structural channels which eases the ion exchange and impurity diffusion Damage induced in doped samples has higher thermal stability in comparison with undoped sample. They also tried the trapping efficiency of electron though they made a statement that it is very difficult because it differ for each impurity. They also devised a model for kinetic damage and erasure. With this as reference one can gain information and predict changes that could happen on addition of impurities, hence there would be some conceptual knowledge in prior and reduce the redundancies [29]. Depth The radiation damage depend on depth of impurities is tested with Li+, N+, Ar+, Er+, B+ and many, where each ion have their own effect means here the depth of affection layer with respect to the energy loss in nuclear or electron range in the complex structure of crystal consisting of covering layer, transition layer of amorphous cluster and buried amorphous layer respectively, Where comes the role of energy there comes the play of threshold, this discussion is also not a exempt to it, threshold value of the electronic energy deposition(natural energy that an ion posses in electron level) from the analysis of data seems to be 100eV/ ion/ Å. Each ion depend on their energy effectively take their place among the layered structure, Among others B+ seems to dwell deeper into the structure and Li+ was on superficial layer which again emphasis on the energy of ion [30]. Polarisation The study related to dependence of gray-track susceptibility with respect to polarization was conducted by Hua XB [6], they irradiated light in directions perpendicular and parallel to the polar axis of KTP crystals. He explains the lifetime of susceptibility incoherence with mechanism responsible for formation of gray tracking, the longer the lifetime of electrons and holes, the higher will be the crystals susceptibility to gray tracking. Though the source here is laser, involvement of electron and hole significantly affected by the electric field, as the topics were separated based on source you encounter this here. There are structural channels parallel to the polar z-axis through which the K+ ion can easily move under the influence of an electric field by a hopping mechanism, leading to a high ionic conductivity along this direction [31,32]. They focused only on role of holes to the orientation in parallel and perpendicular direction, when a light beam is propagated in a crystal, the optical frequency electric field would interact with the charges in the crystal. If the optical frequency electric field is parallel to the z-axis, the K ions will hop along the structural channel due to the high ionic electric conductivity in this direction. In this case, K vacancies do not localize at a definite position and will not serve as a stabilizing entity for the whole trap. In other words, the whole trap will become destabilized and have a short lifetime. As a result, the optical absorption centres will annihilate as soon as they are produced when the optical frequency electric field is parallel to the z-axis. In contrast, when the optical frequency electric field is perpendicular to the z-axis, the hole trap will be stabilized because the potassium vacancy can keep its position and provide a stabilizing force for the hole trap, i.e. the hole trap will have a long lifetime in this case [13]. To conclude the laser irradiation in the direction for which optical frequency, electric field will be in ||z polarization give a rare chance to gray tracking irrespective of exposure time. Control of Gray Tracking Formation in KTP Crystal Gray tracking formation before laser irradiation depend on growth technique and factors like environment, temperature, flux and impurities, To the fact ‘As stitch in time saves nine’ controlling at early stage in easy and deduce post work and also provide efficient result. Research by Perlov D [33] investigated temporal and spatial dimension of gray tracking for quantitative evaluation of KTP gray track susceptibility with respect to the factor, they reported the first experimental evidence of dependency on the material Curie temperature and electrical conductivity, and they observed the susceptibility of KTP could be significantly decreased by adjusting the growth parameters. For instance impurities included in crystal would originate the optical absorption where in case susceptibility also depend on absorption coefficient before laser irradiation this event add to the cause so that one can understand that crystal with many impurities indicated large susceptibility but exceptionally crystal with high concentration of hydroxyls had low susceptibility. This lead to the understanding the role of moisture in preventing gray tracking. Considering this concept Shinji Motokoshi [34,35] tried to improve the gray-tracking by controlling the hydroxyl concentration in KTP crystal using the thermal annealing process. It was found that large GTS (gray tracking susceptibility) in original crystal was improved by annealing in the air and that was almost returned to original value by annealing in vacuum. These results mean that the change of GTS was caused not only by an effect of the heating, but also by the transfer of molecules in the air such as oxygen and hydroxyl. However, it was previously reported that the annealing did not influence to the gray-tracking and the hydroxyl. The reason of difference with their data was due to the annealing conditions. The optimization of annealing conditions such as temperature, time, and environment had been investigated and a new approach proposed was thermal annealing pre-process. It was demonstrated that the graytracking formation and the hydroxyl concentration could be controlled by thermal annealing process before laser irradiation, the KTP crystal was decreased transmittance with the laser irradiation time before the annealing. In the case of the annealing in air, however, the decrease of transmittance was suppressed, and also the transmittance decreased again by annealing in the vacuum as mentioned before, As a result they understand that KTP crystal could include the hydroxyls in air by the annealing process. In this work, it was shown the dependence of gray-tracking susceptibility on preannealing conditions as atmosphere gases, temperature and humidity for KTP. The annealing was made with an electric oven at the temperature up to 1000 0C. The atmosphere in the oven was exchanged to air, nitrogen, oxygen, and vacuum (at 10-3 torr). The humidity in nitrogen gas was changed from 6 to 99% by control the flow rate both dry and wet gases. The annealing time in vacuum was 72 hours, and the others were 12 hours [34,35]. In comparison with no annealed sample, the samples annealed in air and N2-wet indicated decreased gray-tracking formation. The contrast occurred while annealing them in vacuum and dry gases. This cleared that gray-tracking formation could be controlled by humidity in gases but not the kind of gases. Thus one can understand the dependency and positive application of impurity well and thus efficient control is made easy. Elimination of Gray-Tracking Effects of KTiOPO4 Controlling make the KTP resistant to gray track to increase the life time of it in application, where elimination is the process done after the appearance of gray track to the extent until it meet the catastrophic damage for the purpose of reuse, Generally two methods are followed to eliminate the chromic damage which is explained in following sessions [36]. Thermal Annealing Thermal annealing is the general and simple, effective processes to retrieve the original state of crystal by eliminating the gray tracking, The temperature depend on density of gray tracking formed so the temperature differs in each crystal and approximating it prior is difficult, from our analysis of multiple data mostly KTP recovered from gray tracking was annealed about temperature above 150 °C. Strong Focussing Mechanism There was discussion on some dependencies previously there one could find the dependency and relation of radiation beam radius, focussing and power density in formation of gray tracking and among them respectively. Thus it is known that radius of beam and power density are inversely proportional, XIANG Zhen [30] proposed a system based on the above concept that eliminate the formed gray track. They thus made a setup as in below figure (Figures 4-6) where the radius of input beam is enlarged this technique resulted in decrease of power density so as decrease in conversion efficiency. Therefore it resulted in condition that one should compromise between conversion efficiency and deformation of gray tracking, when they went into detail analysis of any alternate way they found one thing in common that the increase in radius within the KTP only provided the required changes. So they adjusted the setup by adjusting the lens L2 of the focussing system thus the radius of incident beam on surface is small but in enlarges inside the crystal this provided the satisfactory result with un changed conversion efficiency and this idea of enlarging the beam only at output surface is strong focussing and both output and input is weak focussing. However effective may the strong focusing the large divergence in crystal may lead to phase mismatching, Luckily KTP has large acceptance angle that prevent this but careful choosing on focus ratio and the distance between the crystal and focussing system to be made to avoid discrepancies, else one may phase consequence like decrease in efficiency due to phase matching and appearance of gray track. Click here to view Large Image 9 Click here to view Large Image 10 Electrically Induced Gray Track Any material finally reaches the application status which involves electrical device and application of electric field, the application of an electric field leads to damage by electrolysis i.e. by electrical currents flowing through the crystal. For instance: For dc fields;0.4kV/cm along the polar axis, a grey colouration is observed and this is known as electric field induced gray tracks [31]. Furthermore, at ac fields of; 0.4 kV/cm and 1 Hz frequency, there is induced order-disorder phenomenon involving K+ ions have been observed. The schematic diagram of experimental set up electrically inducing of gray track shown [40]. The crystal structure of KTP (space group Pna21) consists of threedimensional network of TiO6 octahedral and PO4 tetrahedral [32]. There are structural channels parallel to the polar c axis through which the K+ ions can easily move under the influence of an electric field by a vacancy mechanism, (similar to one of two sub system modelled by Murk V [7] leading to a high ionic conductivity along this direction emphasized by Morris PA [33]. Gray tracks produced in KTiOPO4 (KTP) by applying a dc electric field have been studied through optical absorption, Raman scattering, and synchrotron x-ray topography. The study of the optical absorption and Raman scattering from the gray-tracked region suggests that their formation is accompanied by changes in the electronic levels of Ti4+ and also provided information on remnants strain of gray tracking [34-36]. Click here to view Large Image 11 Remnant Strain of Gray Tracking Raman spectra of KTP crystals containing gray tracks were obtained by passing the laser beam through the gray-track region. The x-ray topography of the gray-track region was recorded using the synchrotron radiation source operating at 2GeV with 250mA current. Satyanarayan MN [37] aim was to identify the localized structural changes or disorder that may occur along the grey tracks. In their observation they found gray colouration which obviously due to absorption but in region of 400-850nm to achieve their aim they should check the effects of absorption and Raman spectrum, all there reports were in comparison with the virgin and gray tracked crystal, so the resulted Raman intensity was reduced for gray tracked crystal than the virgin which is due absorption but the normalised intensity was greater for gray tracked crystal, so looked for other parameter influencing the Raman intensity. Such as that wavelength of incident radiation and the electronic energy level structure in the crystal seems to play a role, He found that for lower wavelength still lower comparative values were obtained than the previous which impose a direct relationship. If there is any structural change or disorder in the crystalline state then it gives rise to the new Raman lines and frequency shifts. The existing Raman lines might also split, if there is a localized disorder and translational symmetry is destroyed within the crystal. Here in their experimental research they didn’t find any such features, so they strongly believe and recommend that no major structural changes is happening to the crystal due to electrically induced gray track but this is not the only criteria to confirm it, further investigation with inclusion several condition is necessary to come to an conclusion. They also proposed a idea on comparing the structural damage due to both ac and dc field, where the work is not yet published, However from the so far investigation there is only revelation of electronic level changes which is relating to dc field. Nevertheless, the x-ray topography indicates that a remnant strain persists along the gray tracks [37]. Influence of water vapour in electrical damage The moisture influence was seen in recovering the gray tracking in crystal before applying it as a device, Here its influence in electro-optic device. The research work of Morris PA and Crawford MK investigation results indicate that the susceptibility of hydrothermal and flux grown KTP crystals to electric-field damage is increased when the atmosphere surrounding a device has a relatively high vapour pressure of water. Protons from the atmosphere migrate into the crystals due to the applied electric field and provide charge compensation for the Ti3+ defects responsible for damage in KTP [38]. Here they compare two growth technique one is hydrothermal and another is flux growth, among them flux grown is highly susceptible to the electric field damage. This is happening due to migration of Hydrogen from atmosphere to the crystal via cathode, some researchers also observed yellow colour induced at anode due to excess electron [38]. Morris PA [39] made significant contribution in investigating electro chromic damage of KTP by analysing many parameters like temperature, optical properties and also the possible potassium vacancy system at very early stage, among them most minute and significant is the relation of AC conductivity with the gray tracking [40-44]. The creation of damage is directly proportional to the average current which in turn proportional to the AC conductivity of crystal, the crystal’s conductivity might increases due to impurity addition. This damage leads off at cathode and migrates to anode until the entire crystal gets damaged. Go to Conclusion This article covers broad scope of gray-tracking, this even helps amateur to acquire knowledge on it because this explains the phenomenon of gray-tracking including its effects in product ,causes for formation, possible mechanism in crystal that employ gray-tracking such as laser induced ,electrically induced and defects due to its growth technique ,polarisation effects and influence of impurities and its depth and this mostly concentrate on KTP crystal which is a promising superior material for a variety of nonlinear optical and electro-optical applications. It also direct your way of search if interested in further investigation on gray tracking. For more Open Access Journals in Juniper Publishers please click on: https://juniperpublishers.com/ for more details click on the juniper publishers material science

[skinweareinblog]

What Causes Freckles?

In a nutshell, freckles are simply a sprinkling of the pigment protein, melanin, which appears on the skin when the skin is exposed to UV rays. Melanin is basically a chemical made by skin cells called “melanocytes.” It is produced to protect the skin from the sun´s harmful ultraviolet rays. It protects the skin by reflecting or absorbing the UV rays.

Now, let´s talk about the matter at hand in detail—what causes freckles on the face exactly?

In most cases, freckle is usually triggered by the over-exposure to sunlight. In order to protect the skin from the sun´s harmful UV rays, the skin produces melanin, which causes freckles to appear or become dark and brown. Now, in some cases, the melanocytes (melanin) spread out evenly and appear something like a tan. However, that doesn´t happen to everyone. In other people, the melanocytes group together in clumps and cause a cluster of freckles to suddenly appear. Therefore, if you get freckles when you bask in the sunshine, you should understand that your skin is more sensitive to the sunlight.

Although freckles are most commonly found on the face, as this is the part of the body that gets exposed to the sunlight the most, they can actually show up anywhere on the skin.

Sunlight is not the sole factor that influences freckles. It can be caused due to genetics too. Whether you call them – gingers, the devil’s spawn or angel-kissed, be sure to call redheads out of the sun because along with their fiery tresses comes a powerful propensity to develop melanoma, a particularly deadly form of skin cancer.

So why do redheads tend to have more freckles? Because both red hair and freckles are usually caused by the same gene, MC1R. The gene perches on melanocytes and controls the pigment balance in both hair and skin. When MC1R is working the way it normally does, it converts any pigment the body produces into eumelanin, which is responsible for black and brown hair and skin colours. When the MC1R gene is “broken,” it allows a rarer type of human pigment, pheomelanin, to build up in the body. Pheomelanin causes reddish hair and the rusty look of most freckles. Variations of the MC1R may also control the number of freckles people have.

  Do all redhaired irish? Definitely not! Read “I am not Irish!“

Basically, your genetics can decide how those darker specks will show up. People who have lighter skin and blue or green eyes are generally likelier to have freckles than those with darker skin. Fair-skinned people have less melanin in their skin. Hence, when the sunlight causes their skin to make produce melanin, they often form freckles instead of getting an even suntan like other people with darker complexions.

Do gingers smell different?

It is completely natural for a person to have freckles, don`t panic. Thankfully, they aren´t harmful. You shouldn´t be worried if you see new freckles appearing or if your freckles appear overnight. The appearance of freckles is not a sign of health problems and complications. However, you should note that people with freckled skin are more susceptible to skin cancer as we mentioned above. Miiskin helps you to track your moles and freckles for changes over time by using photos to create snapshots of your skin and moles’ appearance.

If you want to prevent freckles, we would advise you to use sunscreens with an SPF (Sun Protection Factor) of at least 50. You should also seek shade or stay indoors during the peak sun hours of 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Read Our Guide How To Get Rid of Freckles

[antiagingsol-blog]

Anti Aging Skin Treatment - 7 Tips On Looking Younger

Do you intend to look younger? Allow's encounter it, nowadays, that doesn ' t? Once it was just celebrities and those in the public eye that bothered with looking older everyone else grew old beautifully! Currently 40 is the brand-new 30 and guys in addition to females respect their appearance, there is even a fad in culture to victimize the older generation. What can you do to remain looking younger? There is no Anti Aging Cure-all that will certainly clear your wrinkles overnight, yet with discipline as well as an excellent Anti Aging Skin Treatment regimen in position you will be on your way to looking younger for longer. There are lots of drastic options readily available for anti aging skin care to help you look younger, from the standard aesthetic face lift to infusing chemicals like Botox into the skin to provide a temporary crease smoothing effect. Not every person is ready, or financially able to go to these extremes. So just what can you do on a day to day basis that will aid you really feel and also look more youthful? By adhering to the 7 steps below, you will be on your way to an extra youthful look for longer. And remember it is never far too late (or prematurely!) to start an excellent anti aging regimen. 7 ideas on looking after your body and also mind: 1. Drink a lot of water each day - most medical professionals recommend 7 to 10 glasses a day. Water purges out toxic substances, maintaining your body as well as skin tidy. Additionally your skin will look more clear and plumper if it is moist. Definitely the first step for "anti aging skin care " to look younger. 2. Consume a healthy well balanced diet regimen, include something from all the significant food groups daily in your diet regimen. Eat lots of fiber as well as fresh vegetables and fruit. The UK government suggests five parts of vegetables and fruit are consumed daily, however this should be the minimum amount you eat. Fruit and also veggies include numerous important minerals and vitamins that assist maintain and repair the skin and also cells. Not only will your skin appearance more youthful yet your body will age much better and you will certainly be less susceptible to many usual conditions of old age. The prefect "anti aging skin treatment solution " Additionally avoid eating fatty and oily foods which raise your weight however do not offer you anything nutritionally. Overweight people usually look and really feel much older compared to they are. 3. Purpose to lead an anxiety cost-free, calm presence. If you are worried the body launches chemicals which years earlier would certainly have aided you to handle the trouble with "battle " or "flight ". Considering that these are not a solution to many of life today's troubles, the chemicals will certainly remain in your body as well as cause you to come to be emotionally or physically ill. Ensure that you rest well and also work out regularly. Use whichever techniques assist you to kick back - taking a lengthy warm bath, massage therapy or scent therapy are just a couple of to try. Remember, extreme stress will just trigger your hair to go white and your face to look tired and lined. Appreciate life! 4. Routine exercise, taken a minimum of 3 times a week and everyday when possible, will certainly function wonders in assisting you feel and look more youthful. Make certain the exercise is energetic enough to earn you fear and your skin will look younger as contaminants are eliminated. Keep in mind to contact your medical professional prior to considerably transforming your workout regimen. 5. Prevent UV radiation as it is the significant cause of early skin aging and also wrinkles. Ensure you always have adequate sunlight defense for the climate and also your skin kind. Acquire facial moisturisers which consist of UV defense for day-to-day use. Usage of a top quality high factor sunlight cream need to belong to your daily routine. A tan could look good for a while but you will mature and wrinkle promptly as well as be extra vulnerable to skin illness such as cancers. 6. Attempt to eliminate pure nicotine and alcohol consumption. Cigarette smoking will mature you as chemicals in the smoke are maturing to the skin and will certainly reverse your anti aging skin care process. In addition, if you are forever scrunching up your eyes via smoke, crow's lines around the eyes will certainly appear all too rapidly. Alcohols contain several toxic substances which are harmful to your wellness. Excessive drinking will mean your liver not deals with freing your body of these contaminants. 7. Search for skin care products which are anti aging (those consisting of the ingredients Vitamin C, retinol and ceramides are really excellent). Attempt different anti aging skin treatment products to see which works finest for you and also moisturise daily. Bear in mind, if you feel good regarding on your own, you will certainly look excellent.

Read more informations click here lifecell anti-aging treatment

welcome back to Western TV hi guys I'm unit and I'm back well it feels like it's winter already in Korea you know because of the seasonal changes it's already really really cold and I feel like my skin is becoming really dull and rough not to mention that my makeup will not go on smoothly and looks really flaky these you guys know that most of anti aging products come out at this season at fall that's kind of interesting huh well so that's why today I have prepared a video to talk about anti-aging tips for those of you in your 20s to 40s and I had a lot of questions about on eye creams also I wanted to remind you guys that I did a video before about eye creams eye cream for young skin anger tea so don't forget to check that out all righty then let's get started so there's three anti-aging skincare steps so the first one is the early anti aging steps early anti aging starts in the beginning of your 20s and that's why it's probably called early anti aging the key solution to early anti aging is moisturizing and protecting your skin from dry skin types to oily skin types that lacks moisture moisturizing moisturizing moisturizing is the key point so you should always keep your skin moisturized okay so I'm going to introduce some of the products that's good for early anti aging the first one I wanted to introduce you to is this one this cream is a night cream all you have to do is put it on and just go to sleep I like it because throughout the night it just really keeps my skin really moisturized and this one little thing will help you to balance your oil and moisture balance all right so the next one I wanted to show you is this cocoon mask I think as soon as I opened it up and used it from the sheets the quality is different and I don't know how to explain it but I will show you guys in a bit and you can actually pull the sheet and put it on the back and it will just stay that way so it's really great for the elasticity and it also covers the lip part so in the beginning I was like it was really hard for me breathe just through my nose then for some of you that you have a lot of clock codes it might be tough for you but it's perfect because they have live care also at the same time so that's the two reasons I really like this product it has a cocktail of multi silky proteins and spider silk - you know moisturize and protect your skin the second step is anti-aging care for people with visible pore enlargement or fine wrinkles and lack of elasticity so our skin starts aging a little before and after you turn 25 so if you are seeing wrinkles that means that probably it has progress and when we are in our 30s our body aging starts speeding up so that even if you started anti-aging care you know before you can see you know enlargement of pores you can see lack of elasticity and you can also see wrinkles so I think the key points here is that you do all anti-aging care or routines depending on your skin's condition all right so this is the first one I wanted to introduce you to it's a snail essence and it has 80 percent of snail extracts in it and when you look for a snail product it's very important that you double check you know the other how much amount of snail extracts or snails is actually in there and another thing is it has adenosine which is a excellent ingredient for wrinkle care so overall this essence will make your skin really healthier I wanted to introduce you to the next one and this is Chad your recovery cream and it will help your skin's condition to improve from any stress or stimulation that your skin might have had I know how frustrating that is because I have both on I have a lot of freckles and I also have pigmentation around to my nose area in my lip area because I use something wrong and it wouldn't go away and it just takes a lot of patience for pigmentation and freckles to go away so I want to recommend you to this cream if you wanna get rid of that but you still have to be patient because you can't see results you know right away and it has the ingredient eg F in it which has won a Nobel price so it must be good ring for its excellent effect for whitening and wrinkle care in Korea it's also called the EGF is also called you know a Botox that you can put on so it's that effective and that really you know good so the third one is anti-aging care for those of you who are already seeing signs of aging if you're here already then you need to do anti-aging care steps that will directly affect your skin cells keep Lippmann if your skin starts aging then the functions such as the protection of your skin barrier or scar recovery and at the sebum and other functions will slow down we need to choose products with functions that will improve our skin the first product is the snail bomb and I want to recommend it for those of you who feel like the skin around your eyes always kind of no very rough and dry it's a foam type that melts really easily and well into your skin and it will help you to moisturize and nourish you know the skin around your eyes next one is this one and I've introduced you to this mask before I really like it because it's the one that you know you can put it right behind your ear to give you that extra pull for elasticity or that lifting effect and this mask just focuses on wrinkle care and moisturize use your fourth finger to put on the essence make a V then pull up and pull down with the V from the front of your eyes to the temple drag and massage five times press lightly between your eyebrows and your eyes the front part to the back part press lightly make small circles massage your eyes and then from the inner part to the outer part drag and massage for the bottom part of your eyes from the inner part to the outer part drag and massage put essence on your laugh lines with your thumb press lightly on your cheekbone with your second finger press lightly on the side of your nose and then open your mouth and make an ah I basically put everything and anything that is left on my hands after putting it on my face I massage my neck with my fingers upward this way use your second and third finger to make a V with the V starting from the front of your eyebrows to the back drag and afterwards pull from the end of your eyebrows to your temple alright so that's it for today and I'm sorry about the clothes we had some trouble with the camera so that's why I'm finishing it up right now I hope that this video about anti aging really helped you guys because we had a lot of questions about when and how to start anti aging and that's why we decided to beat this video so please leave us comments and any questions that you guys might have and I will see you guys next time bye subscribe wishtrend TV or be square subscribe which trend TV or let's guys please subscribe please I'm doing this please subscribe